For the past several years Knoxvillian Rand Bradford has been working on a series of pastel paintings of the Fountain City lake and fountain, as part of a “Reflections” series that connects nature with people.
“We are part of our natural surroundings, and sometimes we forget that,” he says. “But everyone likes to get out and enjoy nature.” Now, Bradford is creating a series of limited-edition prints of several of those pastels. “The spring-time blossoms will create that splash of color that reminds us all of the season,” he says.
In the early 1980s, Bradford painted a series of oil paintings of “bodies of water in the area and how their surroundings were reflected on the water’s surface. That evolved into a series of bridges that celebrated these important structures that link the different parts of our lives. Bridges are massive but at the same time graceful with their sweeping arches.” Many of those paintings, large in scale, grace area facilities.
This time, in addition to switching to pastels, Bradford is working on a smaller scale. “The large oils require large display places, but the more intimate pastels can work anywhere,” he says.
“I wanted to make something that brings the outdoors inside so that iconic landscapes of the area can become accessible to just about anyone.”
The Fountain City Lake is a natural for his latest series. The water and its neighboring park provide a natural escape from the hubbub of Broadway. The lake, which was created in the 1890s and has gone through several modifications because of problems brought on by its age and its popularity, became the property of the city of Knoxville last year and has undergone a comprehensive restoration.
Bradford began his project in 2014 and has completed five of the pastels. The first one to be offered as a print is of the lake’s fountain and will be available in time for this year’s April 22 opening of the Dogwood Arts Festival. Initially, the prints will be on sale at Bearden’s Southern Market.
“Knoxville embraces the festival every spring,” Bradford says, “so why shouldn’t we have reminders of how beautiful our mountain-foothills area can be, something that can provide a bit of beauty all the time?”
In the future, Bradford is planning on prints from his larger oils as well, initially working with another favorite subject, trees.
“When I was small,” he says, “we lived in a rural area of Alabama on property that was dominated by a large, ancient white oak. My brother and I played under that tree, and I think that since it provided shelter, it also represented protection for us. For me, large trees, with their majesty, have always meant a protective umbrella. Several years ago, my brother and I went back to the old homeplace for the first time in decades – that oak was the only thing that remained of where our childhood memories were formed.”
Besides the Fountain City Park works, other paintings that will be available are landscapes of Dowell Springs and the ancient tulip poplar tree in the Keller Bend area, both in west Knoxville.
Melanie Staten is a public relations consultant with her husband, Vince.