Bramblett jettisoned traditional compositional methods, instead inventing processes that determined his work's appearance through experimentation with unorthodox materials and transformations caused by water, wind, temperature, and motion. His studio in an eighteenth-century farmhouse had low ceilings and walls interrupted by windows and doors that prevented vertical work. These constraints led him to create a series of paintings by pouring acrylic paint into plywood boxes and cardboard frames on the floor. For X Teardrop, he poured brown paint directly onto raw canvas, resulting in a heavily saturated X that flows outward from the center, seeping into fabric and forming a shape evocative of animal skin.
Raised in Wedowee, Alabama, Bramblett received his BFA from the University of Georgia and his MFA from Yale University. He worked as a professor of art in the Painting and Drawing department at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art for almost forty years, helping build the school as we know it today. Over the course of his career, he experimented with unorthodox materials and transformations caused by water, wind, temperature change, and motion to create a body of work that is visually and conceptually diverse. Bramblett received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. His work has been shown in Philadelphia—including at Woodmere—and at some of New York’s most prestigious galleries.
