Brad Reay’s map-like paintings are a kind of “organised chaos”

“My art is freestyle and abstract, I just sit down and create. Art takes me away from the stresses and strains of my life and helps me channel my thoughts into something positive,” shares Brad Reay. Brad is an artist working at Headway East London, a charity supporting brain injury survivors, their families and carers in their creative studio space: Submit to Love. Characterised by his bold patchworks of colour, filled with polka dots and hatchwork lines, Brad spends his time building up “hundreds of shapes that come together to form a cohesive whole”. This intricate approach to making allows him to “explore the interplay of colours and shapes, resulting in artworks that are rich in texture and depth,” shares the Headway East London team.

The artist first discovered his detailed art practice, during an eight-month stay in hospital following his brain injury in 2009. Formerly a mechanic and a refuse truck driver, Brad was working seven days a week, before he sustained an injury that left him with physical and cognitive changes. “Now I need 24-hour care because of my memory loss […] I don’t let my brain injury define me, but it has taken a long time for me to accept it and to rebuild my life,” he says. It’s therapeutic for him to create; Brad refers to his technicolour artworks as a kind of “organised chaos – because that’s how my life feels right now… but I feel honoured to have my works seen at major public galleries’, he says.

Brad has showcased his work at Southbank Centre, Rich Mix, Autograph Gallery, UCLH and the Barbican in Submit to Love’s Differently Various exhibit. You can see more of Brad’s work in Submit to Love’s current art trail of Differently Various in Different Spaces: a series of four exhibits and a programme of events showing art works made at Headway East London across north, central and east London, on until August 2024.