BRANDON THE WIZARD (AMERICAN)
Brandon Bailey is an artist who is known by the moniker "Brandon the Wizard aka Gandalf the Black." He has a strong belief that art is a potent form of magic that could influence the physical, mental, and metaphysical aspects of our lives. He uses the title "Wizard" to emphasize the profound impact his art has on these levels. The name "Gandalf" is a tribute to the wise and mystical nature of his craft, paying homage to the renowned wizard from J.R. Tolkien's works. The word "Black" represents the primal void that is the source of all things in the universe, reminding him of the deep origins from which his creativity flows. The Wizard is from Ontario, California. He has over 15 years of experience in live painting at concerts, raves, transformational festivals, and private events. His creativity knows no bounds, and he infuses his energy and passion into every stroke. In addition to his skill with a canvas, The Wizard is a talented graphic artist, using software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe After Effects to bring his visions to life. He also excels in music, producing and singing across genres like hip-hop, metal, and experimental beat production. Brandon is a multi-instrumentalist, mastering the guitar, bass guitar, and drums, and creating songs and instrumentals that appeal to commercial audiences.
The Wizard’s artistic goal transcends the conventional. His creations serve as a conduit for the philosophy of oneness, weaving together spiritual beliefs and modalities from diverse cultures across the globe. Through his art, he showcases the profound interconnectedness of humanity while paying homage to pop culture icons from the worlds of comic books and anime, which do as well, and hold the keys to universal truths. Brandon the Wizard aka Gandalf the Black invites you to step into his enchanting realm, where art is magic, and the canvas is the conduit to a higher understanding of our shared existence.
Represented by ACCA Gallery, Beverly Hills
Browse Paintings BRANDON THE WIZARD Catalogue
THE PICTURE IS QUICKER THAN THE EYE
ESSAY BY Peter Frank / International Art Critic, Curator and Poet
Art in the digital age must embrace the vast universe of images and styles now available to us. It must also acknowledge the vast array of tools we now have to invent and modify those images and styles. Today’s street art seems even readier than today’s studio art to create a new artistic ideology, a new view of art itself. And an artist like Brandon the Wizard has already brought the street-art aesthetic – ethos, even – back inside the artistic workplace. Fanciful and heraldic, narrative and abstract, futurist and surrealist and expressionist, Brandon’s art knowingly melds high art and low, entertainment stylizations and intellectual propositions, recognizable objects and psychedelic distortions into a screen-size surge of pan-pictorial pandemonium, a movie of an opera about a dream, a dream any of us could dream but haven’t.
The immanent glow buzzing through Brandon’s apparitions recalls both the big bang that birthed the cosmos and the radiance that has energized art for almost two centuries, ever since the camera relieved the paintbrush of its pictorial responsibilities and allowed artmaking to be about light and color and contour and rhythm – not the story, but the feeling. Brandon’s wizardry takes us through the canvas, through the keyboard, and into the collective mindstream.
Peter Frank / International Art Critic, Curator and Poet
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