Brad Terhune is a multi-disciplinary artist focusing on the use of the printed page as collage material. Growing up in the north Jersey suburbs, Terhune traces his artistic practice to a childhood spent drawing, painting and making objects, often out of found materials. After attending the School of Visual Arts, and a career that focused on staff development and collaboration, Brad decided to pursue art education as a profession. Teaching in public schools and museum settings has driven Brad to continually develop his practice, focusing on collage, painting, photography and mixed media. He participates in several nonprofits dedicated to supporting artists and the greater community; a critique group providing constructive criticism and support to its artist participants; and a cooperative gallery whose main objective is bringing art to the community in its purest form. Currently, his work utilizes found imagery and text to question our perception of visual information. Exhibiting regularly throughout the NY/NJ area, his work is in collections in Japan, England, France, and throughout the United States.


Artist Statement

One of the joys that I have found in my life-spanning collage practice is the hunting and gathering of imagery and building something entirely new. The contrast of texture or color, the proportion of the parts to each other, the emphasis placed on parts of composition (or not); meaning reveals itself and is defined by the addition of one part to another. Art is about exploration and decision making, and I see the practice of collage as similar to deciding on how to draw a line, or putting two colors next to each other when painting.

Recently, I have been considering the connection between semiotics and the appropriation of found and repurposed imagery, and the recontextualizing of fragments of the printed page. Bits of text, phrases, parts of sentences have been added to recent work, some more subtly than others, to add a sense of inquiry when experienced with imagery.

Composition has consistently been a key aspect that drives images towards an aesthetic and ultimately their meaning or message. As I juxtapose found images and text, those contrasts help shape what I am trying to communicate, or at least prod the viewer into thinking about the relationship between words and pictures.

Although influenced by Dada, the Beats, the French New Wave films, and punk, I am addressing the zeitgeist (which is pretty absurd itself), and striving to be authentic; these images are not meant to emulate or be derivative of the work of other artists. These images are who I am, and I am these images.

Brad Terhune
July 2025