About Me

Hi, My name is Brendan Grant, I live in Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand, and have lived here for almost all of my life.

I've been drawing all my life, and painting since about 2001. I try and paint mainly cheerful works with lots of colour, movement and energy.

I specialise in Wellington scenes, I'm still developing my style as I go along, and still experimenting.

I've travelled a bit and found Wellington City has a unique kind of buzz to it, all the urban sculptures, and the energy to it. It's a great city for painting, and I find you can never run out of places to make good painting scenes from.

I am mainly influenced by Impressionists and Surrealists art. Some of my main influences in my painting style are Vincent Van Gogh, and Edward Hopper. I like to draw from a lot of influences though, and like to look at all types of art, even if it doesn't influence what I paint. I like to make paintings that feel lively and fun. I always try and put my own personal touch into the painting style, but also find that when I'm not trying to stick within a personal style, it always seems to come through.

I paint mainly from various photographs, and if I've got the time, sometimes I like to sit on the scene and do some pencil drawing, to base the painting from, and get more of a feel for the scene, but often just go from many photographs.

I often get asked how long my paintings take to finish. I never actually time myself, but it is approximately the same effort as reading a book, except I can listen to music at the same time.

Outside of art, I like watching sports, playing basketball, (casually) listening to music, (and lots of it) travelling (when I save up money again) and web design.