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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We finish our landmark arts building gallery roundup with an artist who captures New York in romantic yet realistic oil paintings. They are pieces that make you remember visits to corners of the West Village, walks in the snow, and sunsets that cameras can't capture. Ellen Bradshaw's new show, Manhattan: Dusk to Dawn is at the Pleiades Gallery, and it was named by New Yorker culture writer Doreen Felix as one of her three obsessions this fall. Writing, "Ellen Bradshaw makes oil paintings of the city's transient elements, bridges, crosswalks, store facades. In her paintings, the city seems suspended in a time when it was less corporatized. When it was more hospitable to the hungers of nighttime flaneurs." Manhattan: Dusk to Dawn is at the Pleiades Gallery on the third floor at 547 West 27th Street in Chelsea through September 30th. Ellen Bradshaw joins me in studio. Thanks for being here.

Ellen Bradshaw: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, a reminder, you can go to our Instagram @allofitwnyc. In our stories, we have images from the artists we've been speaking to today. When I went to your website, it says in bold letters, "Ellen Bradshaw paints the city of New York in oils." [chuckles] When did you know that oil on canvas was going to be the work you do?

Ellen Bradshaw: I always liked oil better. I've tried everything, but both acrylic and watercolor are too restrictive for me. Oil, you can just have fun and if you make a mistake, you can go right over it and just keep on going. I just love the lusciousness of the paint. I love the smell. [chuckles] The whole thing. The colors seem more-- I don't know. They're more alive for me.

Alison Stewart: Texture too.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Something about the texture of it.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes, exactly.

Alison Stewart: That also really fits with New York.

Ellen Bradshaw: Oh, it definitely does. This series I decided to place between dusk to night to dawn, and it was a really freeing series. I could use so much color and intensity and drama. It was so much fun. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I've read a couple of pieces that described your work in the same sentence as Edward Hopper and John Sloan. The Ashcan School influenced you. For folks who don't know, who were the Ashcan painters, and what about their work inspires you?

Ellen Bradshaw: They became my favorites really when I moved to New York because they did New York. They did the gritty, the in-your-face, the common stuff of New York. It really attracted me to their paintings. I read everything I could about them. I studied them. I went to see their paintings, and they definitely influenced me. I hear Hopper all the time, although there's a vast difference, [chuckles] but I don't mind being compared to him.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That's not bad to be in the same sentence.

Ellen Bradshaw: Right. Yes.

Alison Stewart: New York obviously can be a feast for the eyes, but I'm wondering what's tricky about New York as a subject?

Ellen Bradshaw: I'm attracted to the quieter, more solitary part of New York. I hate crowds. You'll rarely find me at Times Square, Canal Street, Herald Square. I walk a lot. I walk the streets and I always have a camera with me or my iPhone and something will always attract me to save that shot because I know I will use pieces of it somewhere along the way. I feel like what I'm trying to do is actually create New York for the New Yorkers who actually live here and not necessarily the glamorous icons all the time of New York, but just the solitary spaces that you walk through every day, and you don't necessarily notice them all the time.

Alison Stewart: There's one called After Hours from 2022, and it's a street scene. It looks like Soho. People coming and going. There are people in the work, but they're recognizable as humans, but they're often faceless. Why that choice?

Ellen Bradshaw: It's almost the New Yorkers that-- When you walk through the city, even as a New Yorker, you don't necessarily look at the faces. There's solitary people going about their daily business, and there's something very poetic about that to me and inspiring. They're not the famous people. Especially in that one, people walking in and out of the shadows and the light, and all of a sudden the light focuses on them. I think in that one piece, someone said, "Was that woman pregnant?" I said, "Yes. She probably was." I didn't even notice that at first. I just liked the shape of her under the light. Yes, I just look for things like that.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Ellen Bradshaw, the name of the show is Manhattan: Dusk to Dawn at the Pleiades Gallery until the end of September. That's the Landmark Arts Building. You studied at Pratt?

Ellen Bradshaw: I did, yes.

Alison Stewart: What did you like to paint when you were studying?

Ellen Bradshaw: I actually went to Pratt for illustration.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes. At one point I thought, "Oh, maybe children's books, maybe this." When I got out of school, I went all around with my book and illustration was dying at the time. It wasn't the illustration that I was attracted to. I started out, "Oh, Norman Rockwell, all that kind of thing." That was gone. I think I went to The New York Times Book Review and the man looking through my portfolio said, "Are you sure illustration is what you want to do? These look like paintings." I never really thought about that before, but there was something that hit me that day and I was like, "Wow, maybe I just would be a painter." Not just, but swerve into that. That really stuck with me.

Alison Stewart: That encounter changed your life.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes. It definitely did.

Alison Stewart: Wow. It's so interesting to think. That's like, had you not gone that day, what would've happened?

Ellen Bradshaw: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: When you're painting something iconic, like Katz's Deli, what is your goal? Is it representation? Is it interpretation? What do you keep in mind of something that is so recognizable?

Ellen Bradshaw: Most of my work is representational. I try to get the emotion of it and also a particular time of day. I'm extremely interested in seasons, the time of day, and the people. In that, you might notice sailors, it was Memorial Day Fleet Week, actually. I don't know. I was just struck by the sailors lined up at Katz's, they had to get there, they had to taste it. I don't know, it just hit me. That's really how I usually find my subjects. Just something will just hit me in a funny way and I'll grab onto it.

Alison Stewart: On the opposite side to what of these iconic images, like Katz's, you mentioned little tiny corners. There's one that's called Eventide, Commerce Street, and I think you'd really have to know this corner-

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes, definitely.

Alison Stewart: - to find it. It's picturesque in the best way. Not in a corny way. [chuckles] When did you stumble on this and decide you wanted to paint that?

Ellen Bradshaw: My studio is in the West Village, which is basically my all-time favorite neighborhood in the city. It's quiet, neighborly and just so-- It almost seems like you're going back in time still. I wander there a lot. That's definitely one of my favorite streets around that area. It's always just quiet, poetic and the people that live there almost have lived there forever, kind of a thing. Again, drawn to the quiet areas of New York.

Alison Stewart: When you think about this dusk to night to dawn, what's something you saw at night that you thought was unusual and worth painting?

Ellen Bradshaw: I think it's the way I start with a really dark-- The sky is really dark and it's the way New York, the colors pop out at you in a different way than they do during the day. You see different things at night than you notice during the day, and funny little things about buildings too.

Alison Stewart: Like what?

Ellen Bradshaw: I don't know. Like a gargoyle lit up, and I was like, "I never even noticed that building had gargoyles." I didn't know there were gargoyles on some of the most famous, iconic buildings like The Chrysler Building. I didn't know those pointy things were gargoyles. I just found that out the other day, even though I had painted The Chrysler Building. Things pop out differently at night.

Alison Stewart: Are you a different painter at night or do you paint during the day or--

Ellen Bradshaw: I paint during the day. I'm not a night person actually. [chuckles] Some of these photographs I originally took could have been out a window of a taxi. I just would see something and just snap it and use it later. Yes, I paint during the day. Definitely.

Alison Stewart: There's a piece called Delmonico's, Through the Storm, and it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest restaurant in New York City. It had closed during the pandemic and just reopened within a week. I kept thinking Through the Storm, is that a real storm you depicted? Is it a metaphorical storm of having to go through being closed?

Ellen Bradshaw: It turned out to be that way. I'm very attracted to that building. It's so historical and just a beautiful building. I love snow and storms. I love painting that. Unfortunately, we don't get snow here anymore. [chuckles] It's really sad. Yes, that was just a fortunate twist. I wasn't sure it was going to reopen. I've painted the old Bridge Café a lot, which has not, sadly, reopened yet. Still hoping.

Alison Stewart: Oh, what's a painting of something that no longer exists?

Ellen Bradshaw: Oh, that definitely. I must have painted that, I'm guessing, 50 times in different kinds of weather, night, this, and they're all gone. They've all sold because it was the most loved restaurant. I can't even tell you. I miss it to this day. It was my favorite.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Ellen Bradshaw. The name of the show is Manhattan: Dusk to Dawn at the Pleiades Gallery at the Landmark Arts Building on West 27th. There's an image of the Flatiron Building with this really saturated orange sky and purple clouds above and I thought, is this from last June? Or is it just what has happened to us now makes us think of that?

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes, definitely, it wasn't. It was before last June, but it is a little weird now that--

Alison Stewart: A little eerie?

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes, it is. That day was very eerie for me. It felt like Armageddon. I didn't even go out that day. Yes, it works on you and then you just play with color. That one especially was about drama.

Alison Stewart: Yes. It's interesting because it's a lot of drama and it's a lot of color. Some of the edges of the buildings are muted, but the FedEx logo on the truck is very clear. [laughs] When do you decide to just really make something super representational?

Ellen Bradshaw: I love signage. It's weird, but I'm very attracted to that as well. Even if I poke around in an antique store, I notice I go right for the old signs. I feel it anchors the painting in a funny way and something that people recognize. "Oh, I know that." It gives them some kind of feeling with themselves, like they're walking into that painting and they know that.

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's an entry point.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You have a painting of the Flatiron in a snowstorm as well, Snowy Mist, Flatiron. What's important when painting weather?

Ellen Bradshaw: Those are really about feeling and emotion. I love painting snow. What I love about it is things move in and out. They blur, and then all of a sudden you'll see this figure and it almost looks like a monster figure because there's nothing to compare it to. He's just coming out in a snowsuit, standing on top of a mound of snow. Yes, that's also very freeing and I just mush that paint around until it's done. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: What's changed about the way New York looks from when you began?

Ellen Bradshaw: Oh, that's a good question. I think that's why I'm drawn to the West Village. I live down by South Street Seaport, which is very historical. I don't always like the changes. I don't always paint them in. It took me a while to paint in the Manhattan Plaza downtown by the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw it going up I said, "Oh, yuck. This going to--" Then I saw the way it reflected light at different times of day and weather and I said, "Okay, I'll try that."

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] You came round.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes. I do like the old against the new though. That's really cool about New York.

Alison Stewart: When you decide to put two paintings of the same image, [unintelligible 00:13:48] because like I said, there's two pictures of Flatiron at very different times.

Ellen Bradshaw: Yes. I like the contrast of that and also you'll see a lot of the Brooklyn Bridge in my paintings because I live on the 25th floor across from the Seaport and I overlook the Brooklyn Bridge. I did a whole series of sunrises because I'm up early and every single time you look, it's different. It's breathtaking and totally different. I'm almost obsessed with that image, [unintelligible 00:14:19]

Alison Stewart: What's your practice of painting? Are you a get-up and immediately begin painting? Is it just part of your day or is there some days that are painting days and some days are just Ellen Bradshaw in the world? [chuckles]

Ellen Bradshaw: [laughs] I like to paint most days but when I say paint, I'll do it maybe three to four hours at a time, and then my eyes say you're done today and come back the next day and add to it. You come back with fresh eyes instead of just plotting through it. It can get really dull and tight and tired-looking. Yes, I'm more of a three to four hour, but pretty much almost every day.

Alison Stewart: I've asked everyone this, advice you would give to a young emerging artist.

Ellen Bradshaw: Oh, just keep with it. Everybody's going to tell you it's not the way to be. You can't make a living at it, you can't, you can't, you can't, but you just have to believe in yourself. I was told that over and over again, but I knew I was going to do it and nobody was going to tell me I couldn't.

Alison Stewart: Ellen Bradshaw's work Manhattan: Dust to Dawn is at the Pleiades Gallery until the end of September at 547 West 27th Street. Ellen, thank you for coming to the studio.

Ellen Bradshaw: Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

Alison Stewart: Coming up on tomorrow's show, we'll talk about a program that brings ballet training to kids who don't have stable housing. There's a documentary about it called Lift. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

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