Malcolm Bray

Malcolm Bray (b. 1958) is an American painter and mixed-media artist known for his exploration of color, light, and abstraction within representational forms. Born in Kingston upon Hull, England, Bray briefly attended Hull College of Art in 1977, where he explored graphic design, silkscreen printing, and oil painting before moving to the United States in 1984. He became an American citizen in 2005, and he has spent his mature artistic life within the American landscape and painterly tradition, drawing particular inspiration from the legacy of the New York School.

In 1991, Bray settled in Lambertville, New Jersey, in the historic Spoke Works building, where he ran an import business while maintaining a studio alongside it. From 1994 to 2002, the space hosted numerous exhibitions, culminating in New Eclectic, a group of ten artists with a shared artistic vision whose final shows were held at MCS Gallery in Easton, Pennsylvania, and at West Chester University in 2004. That same year, Bray sold his business in order to focus fully on painting, and this transition marked the beginning of his most sustained and productive period as an artist.

Bray's canvases carry the confident gestural language of mid-century American action painting into the contemporary moment, built around bold sweeping strokes of black, gray, and white and incorporating warm flesh tones, terracottas, and earth colors alongside occasional bright accents that give the pictures both visual drama and quiet emotional warmth. Lyrical drips of white paint frequently appear as the finishing gestures of compositions completed in a single sustained burst of activity. His work has attracted the attention of prominent galleries, and he is represented by Cheryl Hazan in New York and by galleries in New Jersey. In 2011, three of his large paintings were included in a group exhibition at the Spanierman Gallery in New York. Bray now resides in the Delaware Valley, dividing his time between Bucks and Hunterdon Counties.