Creating conversation through art

TAMPA - When Jeannette Bradley paints, she hopes her art starts a conversation with the viewer.

"I love the fact that it's your own interpretation of what it is that you see, and it is semi-abstract, so there's enough there for you to have your own experience with the piece," she said.

Bradley has loved art her entire life, but she started painting full-time in 2017. She calls her work "urban art".

"The ideas come from the interactions that I have in the community," she said.

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Those interactions come from Bradley’s other important endeavor, activism. She runs a non-profit called What We Could Be Exchange, which helps create gardens in communities with kids not performing well.

"We're helping them to dream, so we're planting a lot of seeds in them," she said.

Much of her work is based in East Tampa. She currently has a gallery on display at C. Blythe Andrews, Jr. Public Library. She hopes members of the community can see themselves within her work.

"The fact that the figures tend to be black with natural hair is purposeful because as I was growing up, I had to see myself in images that did not look like me," she said.

One of her pieces that she most known for is inspired by Misty Copeland, who was the first African American Female Principal Dancer with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre.

"It's her statement of I want more children that look like me to be able to become, and I thought, oh I need to do a picture of that," she said. "Everything ties into something that is happening in real time, and I am inspired by it, and so I paint it, but I'm painting abstract. I want people to be able to interpret that."

She also loves that different interpretations create conversations. In the future, she hopes to open her own gallery, with the goal of showcasing up-and-coming artists and having roundtable conversations with art as the catalyst.

"I will also use it as an opportunity to bring community together, to begin talking about different perspectives and how we see things differently, and it's really okay," she said.

Bradley’s library gallery is on display until June 6.