Charles Brady was born in Manhattan, New York and studied art at the Art Students League 1948-1951. In 1955 he had his first solo exhibition in the Urban Gallery. During this time he met regularly with other New York artists at Cedar Street Tavern, including Franz Kline and painters like Willem de Kooning. At that time, Brady painted, in an abstract expressionist style, subjects from everyday experience, such as pigeons and the palisades.
Having met some students from Trinity College, Dubli
n who told him how he could live more cheaply in Ireland, he relocated to Ireland and liked the countryside so much that he settled there and painted. Having returned to America briefly, he returned to Dublin, exhibiting in group shows, including the Irish Exhibition of Living Art.
With Eoin Walsh, Noel Sheridan, Patrick Pye and Elizabeth Rivers he formed the committee of Independent Artists. He was awarded the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in the Oireachtas in 1974, the Carroll Prize in the I.E.L.A. and the Landscape Award in the Oireachtas in 1989. Brady has always worked on a small scale. In the 1960s he began to paint the small objects of everyday life: a matchbox, an envelope, a cigarette, fruit of various kinds, a bus ticket etc. In paintings terms, these subjects provided Brady with the same challenge as a landscape.
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