BORN IN 1956 in MOSCOW, IDAHO, Brad Teare has built a distinguished career as a fine artist celebrated for his bold, textured landscapes that honor the spirit of the American West. Now living in Providence, Utah, Teare’s journey has been shaped by decades of creative exploration, beginning with a successful woodcut career and his evolution as a painter known for his expressive palette knife technique.
Teare first gained national recognition in New York’s publishing world, illustrating book covers for literary figures such as James Michener, Anne Tyler, and Alice Walker. Though illustration brought critical success, a pivotal visit to a Van Gogh exhibit profoundly shifted his artistic trajectory. The raw emotion and impasto surfaces in Van Gogh’s paintings revealed a new direction—one that prioritized texture, energy, and the physical presence of paint. Embracing this shift, Teare began painting with palette knives, developing a distinctive style that blends expressive mark-making with strong compositional structure. He draws influence from early American landscape painters such as William Wendt, Birger Sandzén, and Edgar Payne, whose bold brushwork and vibrant palettes mirror the emotional intensity he seeks in his work. Eventually, Teare moved west, settling in a high desert valley beneath the Rocky Mountains, where the dramatic landscape became his enduring muse. His creative process centers on plein air sketching, where he hikes into remote areas to capture fleeting impressions of light and color. These field studies inform larger studio works that retain the immediacy of outdoor painting while deepening thematic and compositional complexity. He believes this approach captures a vitality that photographs or memory alone cannot reproduce.
Teare’s paintings have received numerous accolades. He earned third place at the 2021 American Impressionist Society National Juried Exhibition and was included in the 2019 show. He has had multiple sold-out exhibitions at Quest for the West at the Eiteljorg Museum. Earlier honors include the Grand Prize at Salt Lake City’s Color of the Land show (2006), a Merit Award from the Springville Museum (2003), and residencies at both the Maynard Dixon Studio (2004) and the Forbes Trinchera Ranch (2006). His work has appeared in American Artist (March 2007), Gulf Connoisseur (May 2013), Western Art and Architecture (April/May 2024), Art of the West (Sept/Oct 2024), and Plein Air Magazine (March 2025). He has exhibited at the Forbes Galleries and the Salmagundi Club, both in New York City.
Teare is a member of the American Impressionist Society. His paintings are represented by Manitou Galleries (Santa Fe), Anthony’s Fine Art (Salt Lake City), Lovetts Gallery (Tulsa), Chimayo Trading Company del Norte (Taos), and Broadmoor Galleries (Colorado Springs). His work continues to draw collectors seeking the dynamic interplay of texture, color, and landscape.