I have been producing original narrative paintings every year since 1980 as my life has taken various paths and turns.

I have also made drawings and kept written journals for the last 40+ years which form part of the same body of continuous work. The following quote by Joseph Campbell resonates with my goal as a painter.

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"Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realization of the mystery that underlies all forms. If you lose that, you don't have a mythology. If mystery is manifest through all things, the universe becomes as it were, a holy picture. You are always addressing the transcendent mystery through the conditions of your actual world."

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My works are informed by an interest in creation myths, classical literature, legends, dreams, and other cosmologies. Many of the backgrounds are based on places I have hiked and explored. I have made over 20 trips to Big Bend and it has provided the rugged theater for many narratives. In the completed works, a figure in a landscape then becomes a participant in an unfolding story, and the elements of nature (a river, a mountain, an insect) become part of the symbolic architecture of the painting. Mystical themes weave through much of my work such as the journey of life, metamorphosis, rebirth, purification, and the battle between good and evil.

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I have participated in over 60 exhibitions including five museums in Texas, won statewide competitions, and given artist talks in Houston and Austin. I have had work bought, photographed for magazines and books, written about, stabbed, stolen,won prizes, criticized, and acclaimed. In the end, if you are doing something honest, and speaking from your heart, and it says exactly what you intended all along, there is a deep sense of peace and contentment. Sometimes it settles over me like a silence filled with eternity.

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SELECTIONS from RESUME

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The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds, interviews with Texas artists by

Robert Craig Bunch, College Station: Texas A&M University Press,2025​​​

Timeline: 200 years, Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art, Victoria,Tx, 2024

What I did on my Covid Vacation, Art Car Museum, 2021

International Artist of the Month Award, Artist for Conservation, July, 2020

Saatchi Gallery online, International, 2020

Landscape, Art Car Museum, Houston, 2019-2020

The Victoria Show Decode 361, Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art,Victoria, TX., 2018

Huffington Post, review Chupacabra on the Texas Border from Trump This, Art Car Museum, 2017

Art Essay: Ovid's Hermaphroditus: Jeffrey Brailas' painting "Salmacis and Hermaphroditus",ovidshermaphroditus.weebly.com/essays.html, 2015

The Muses: Art About the Arts, San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, 2014

Permanent Collection, San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, 2014

Artist Talk, Looking at Art, Marshal and Victoria Lightman, Houston, 2013

Myth, Rudolph Blume Fine Art/ Artscan Gallery, Houston, 2013

Texas Mysticism, works from Lynn Randolph, Jeffrey Brailas, and Earl Staley, Nancy Wilson Scanlan Gallery, Austin, TX.,2012

National Juried Biennial: Figurative Painting, Amarillo Museum of Art, Martha Mayer Erlebacher curator, Amarillo, TX.,2011

What Texas Means To Me, national competition, First Place Award, Phillip Wade juror, Austin, 2010

Hunting Art Prize, Finalist, Houston, 2010

Hunting Art Prize, Finalist, Houston, 2008

For The Love Of Art, major retrospective of works from 1980- 2007, Art Car Museum, Houston, 2007

Annual Juried Show, First Place Award, Visual Arts Alliance, Houston, 2001

Bucking the Texas Myth, Grand Prize Award, Dougherty Art Center, Austin, 1998

Phantoms, Freaks, and the Fantastic, Diverse Works, Sharon Engelstein curator, Houston, 1994

Magical Mysteries, 20 paintings, media articles, Art Beat Gallery, Houston,1990

Another Reality, A Traveling Exhibition, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston; McNay Museum, San Antonio; Arkansas Art

Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, Bert Long curator, 1989-1990

Barrett Collection of Texas Art

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