David Brandy

David Brandy is an award-winning lens-based artist. His artistic mantra is, "Beauty can be strange. The strange can be beautiful." The essence of his art is in finding and making what at first glance may seem to be the ordinary, and then encouraging it to bring out its strangeness, and then bending that again to find its true beauty. His eye seems to focus on persuading beautiful things to reveal their “strange”. And his sense of joy delights in the fact that it may take a moment or two for his images to reveal themselves to you.

Brandy's latest series of work is called "The New Standing Stones". This project tells a story of ancestry, immigration, and resilience in a new world, through portraits of some of the earliest farm silos built in Ontario, Canada, by the colonial settlers of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I began this project to honour the life of my great, great grandfather James Brandy who came to this new land – a life of perilous hard work, near starvation, and for James, a tragic end in 1872 when a barn fire took his life.

Today, many of the original structures built by these settlers; farmhouses, barns, sheds, and outbuildings, have long decayed and disappeared. The solid silo, however, remains the only vestige of those first colonial farms. Still standing tall as a lone sentinel that pays tribute to the advent of modern agriculture and settlement in Ontario.

Brandy's main body of work, "Newer Topographics", presents man-altered landscapes that emphasize the strong sense of isolation humankind feels due to the juxtaposition of natural landscapes with solitary manmade constructs.

In March 2022, Brandy’s art was presented with two 15th Annual International Color Awards Nominee titles - one of the leading international awards honouring excellence in colour photography. His art was short-listed for the prestigious 2021 Aesthetica Art Prize, resulting in two of his images on display at the York Art Gallery, UK. He received an Emerging Artists by Emerging Curator Award at the 2019 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. His art sold over-asking in the Curatorial Collection at SNAP 2019 - Toronto’s premier fine art photography auction. He was a short-listed finalist in both the Quest Art 2018 National Art Prize, and the 2017 Salt Spring National Art Prize.

Brandy’s art hangs in collectors residences and in commercial space across North America.