David Bradley is an internationally exhibited artist; his art has been included in dozens of museum exhibitions around the world and was given 4 separate one-man museum exhibitions by the age of 48.
He works in a wide range of materials and techniques, from the figurative to the conceptual. His artwork has been featured on numerous book and magazine covers.
Bradley was born in 1954; he grew up in Minnesota and is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. In additon to being an artist he is known as an activist for American Indian causes and is an aspiring jazz musician.

In 1975, after a couple years of uninspired college work, he joined the Peace Corps to travel and try to help improve the lives of disadvantaged people. He spent time working in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic/Haitian border area, and Costa Rica.
Many of the artistic and cultural experiences he encountered abroad would influence him later in his art career. After completing his Peace Corps tour, he enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), in Santa Fe, NM.

At IAIA, Bradley found his calling; he graduated first in his class of 1979 and was awarded the College Student of the Year Award from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. As an IAIA student, he was elected to serve on the IAIA Board of Regents, as student representative. After IAIA, Bradley quickly completed the required classes to receive his BA in Fine Arts at the College of Santa Fe.
In 1981, he began exhibiting his art work at the prestigious Elaine Horwitch Galleries, with many internationally known artists, including noted Indian artist Fritz Scholder. Bradley became the youngest artist to be given a one-man exhibit at that renown gallery, the show sold-out days before the opening. Around that time, he became one of the first artists to receive an artist fellowship from the Southwestern Association on Indian Affairs, which sponsors the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.
In 1984 he was chosen to be the official Indian Market poster artist, that same year, he was named one of the “Artists of the Year” by the Santa Fean Magazine. Bradley went on to exhibit at the Santa Fe Indian Market, winning many awards and is believed to be the only artist to win the highest awards in both painting and sculpture, in separate years. He was later included in an exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts titled “The Masters of Indian Market”. In the early 90s, he also served on SWAIA’s Board of Directors.

In the mid eighties, Bradley helped organize an Indian/Chicano coalition to work for inclusion in the contemporary exhibition opportunities at the NM Museum of Fine Arts. He then co-founded the Native American Artists Association, (NAAA) which was organized to publicly raise the issue of pseudo-Indian profiteering and wide spread fraud in the Indian arts and crafts business.
The work of the widely-supported NAAA resulted in the passage of state Indian art fraud laws and the passage of the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. Because of the controversies resulting from this work on behalf of the Indian community, Bradley has suffered blacklisting by those who participated in Indian art fraud, including a couple of influential museums and Indian art world politicians.

From 1990-92, Bradley was invited to teach both painting and sculpture, as Visiting Professor/Artist-in-Residence, at his alma mater, IAIA. At this time he was invited to be on an artist planning committee for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

In 1996, he was awarded the City of Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. The same year, he produced a critically acclaimed one-man exhibit, “Restless Native”, at the Wheelwright Museum, in Santa Fe. During the 1990s, Bradley participated in several exhibits in Europe and traveled to Europe twice, on art and cultural exchanges.
During the late 1990s, he was one of the few Indian artists to be invited to participate in Scottsdale’s prestigious, annual Pleasure of the Palettes charity fundraisers. In 1999, Bradley was invited to teach painting at the University of Minnesota, Duluth’s Split Rock Arts Program.



In 2004, David Bradley received an Artist Residency/Fellowship at the School of American Research in Santa Fe. While there, he produced artwork for an acclaimed two-man exhibition titled “Iconoclash” at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Art and Culture.



David Bradley lives with his wife Arlene (Jemez Pueblo) and son Diego, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He simply states his work this way: “To be and artist is to seek Truth.”