David Milbradt

My recent fine arts panoramic landscapes are the culmination of a lifetime of interest in exploring photography and painting in a quest to express my love for nature. I clearly remember visiting the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City when I was fifteen years old. Of all the artwork in that gallery, what fascinated me most was the Chinese landscapes and in particular the hand scrolls that depicted nature as an unwinding reel of intricate images. About that same time my brotherand I became obsessed with photography. We were well equipped with professional 35 mm SLRs and a first-rate dark room which we bought from a widow who had no interest in her late husband’s hobby.

In my second year of college at the University of Kansas, I became captivated by drawing landscapes and converted to a fine arts major. At the U of K I studied with Professor Robert Sudlow, a prolific regional landscape painter whose posthumous work continues to be in demand by collectors. I continued to develop my art as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Madison where I taught drawing classes to undergraduates and was influenced by the magic realism of Professor John Wilde.

After graduating with a Master of Fine Arts, I traveled to Europe and found a gallery in Amsterdam that agreed to exhibit my work the following spring. I visited a wide range of European artmuseums and then settled in Sevilla, Spain to make artwork over the winter. After the show inthe spring, I returned to Madison, Wisconsin where I showed my work in a variety of galleries and restaurants. I was able to fund my artistic pursuits by painting houses during the summers and radually started working with interior decorators doing specialty finishes, tromp l’oeil images,interior murals, and several family group portraits.

Then, in my mid-40s, I went to school and became a licensed acupuncturist. Setting up and running a successful acupuncture clinic monopolized most of my time for the next 20 years, but I was able to continue creating art on a variety of projects, including writing and illustrating acouple of children’s books and photographing a wide range of landscapes. In 2018, I was able to partiallyretire, cutting back on the number of hours in the clinic, which has given me time to explore my artwork again.

I am excited by the panoramic landscapes which I am currently creating. The wide format enfolds the viewer in the landscape creating an intimate and contemplative experience. Scanning the image from side to side invites reflection on the passage of time and the endless diversity of the Midwestern landscape. In these works, I’m able to blend the sharpness of photographic clarity and its richness of detail with the intangible elements of atmospheric light and reflections to evoke a sense of serenity and resilience that reflects our small yet connected place within the larger cycles of the natural world.