Brad Kunkle

Brad Reuben Kunkle is an American figurative painter born in 1978 in rural Pennsylvania and based in Brooklyn, New York. He studied painting at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where he received his BFA in 2001. After years working as a commission portraitist and decorative painter — during which he gilded entire walls in copper — he integrated gold and silver leaf technique into his pictorial practice, transforming it into his most recognizable element. His works exclusively feature female figures — nymphs, priestesses, archetypal figures from myth and folklore — immersed in pastoral landscapes where nature holds absolute sovereignty, with backgrounds and skies covered in gold or silver that evoke medieval religious icons reinterpreted through a contemporary romantic sensibility. His work is in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art and has been represented by Arcadia Contemporary.