Billie Holiday "Strange Fruit" Print

JazzHead Studios is a collection of artworks inspired by and about the feelings and intensities from Jazz music. This collection all mixed mediums or original works on paper. My name is Carl H.Bradford III. I'm a bit of a creative idealist when it comes to my work. I surround myself with the many creative efforts of classic jazz and up and coming jazz musicians, bouncing between the older classics and the new. I feel I have a vast array of inspiration with all the past and present music available. Once I have that music in my ears, it inspires me to create my jazz works on paper. I search everywhere for jazz imagery, or I look in my own personal image collection for that perfect shot. As a graphic designer, I have been influenced by years of editorial image searches. Then hone in on an artist who is fully engaged in deep, musical thought. This is what pushes me to create the many layers that I call my JazzArt. My works can be subtle or dynamic, having color, texture and execution options. It is free flowing or graphic in nature. I work in a mixed medium approach using coffee grounds, watercolors, inks, dyes, pencils and pastels. I lock down each pass of the pastels with fixative, then add the next layer of emotion and color. For many years, I blended my multi-colored wash backgrounds with metallic, inks and dyes. This gave me a background on which to rest, or to pull out the figurative features in my compositions. This visually abstracted the coloring and highlights of my subjects. For the past 6 years, I have done the reverse - locking the features into the top layers with the background layers blended around the subjects. Though I’m still experimenting with new approaches, color techniques, formats and executions, I see myself capturing or recording the history of jazz for a new generation of traditionalists. The only way to survive is to evolve. The only way to evolve is to be creative.