The Brad Blaze Story
Brad Blaze is a world-renowned artist and entertainer. He has combined his talents with showmanship.
Brad Blaze may just be the fastest painter in the world. He has enthralled audiences across Australia, Asia, United Arab Emirates, and The United States performing at large gala dinners with guests including government ministers and celebrities.
At such events, he has painted four prime ministers and some of the world’s leading sportsmen ‘live’ at events including Tiger Woods, Sir Ian Botham, the late Richie Benaud, Shane Warne, Nico Rosberg, and movie stars Eric Bana and Chris Hemsworth.
Brad spent the beginnings of his career working his ‘way up the corporate ladder of an international finance company. On his way to and from work on the train, he honed his skills quickly sketching other passengers without them knowing and reading art books. He did this for ten years!
In 2001 Brad started working part-time as a caricature artist – working at events and having artwork published in magazines and newspapers. He quickly became highly skilled in caricature art, winning awards and being hired to travel throughout China and around Australia for special events. What set him apart from other artists was his talent for drawing and capturing the likeness of a subject extremely fast.
In 2006, after growing his caricature business into a full-time career with over thirty artists across Australia, he decided to launch his own show. It consisted of fast painting on stage, comedy, and magic. He appeared on the first-ever episode of Australia’s Got Talent (2007).
Brad started getting international exposure – he performed in front of an estimated 40,000 people at the Fiji Showcase and appeared on Asia television and many Australian television shows including Mornings with Kerry Anne, The Shak, Saturday Disney, The Circle, and Mornings.
Brad was awarded “Entertainer of the Year” at the Australian Event Awards.. He has taken his entertainment further by now performing approximately half of his shows in Asia and the United Arab Emirates. He has painted World Leaders, Sultans, Celebrities, and famous sports stars with a number of the aforementioned now collecting his art.
Brad Blaze has painted many celebrities including movie Stars, famous sports stars, and prime ministers.
For years I would open my show with a painting of Bono (lead singer of U2) on my spinning canvas. It was definitely my favourite – I love my 80’s music!
These days it’s definitely Freddie Mercury – you have to be there to experience it!
I once flew to Singapore to do one painting which took all of 3 minutes. That’s fast! But the fastest was probably at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) where I walked on the pitch at half time of a Sydney Sixers Big Bash game, added some green paint to a painting and then lit up Shane Warnes face ( I had already painted it and covered it in fire paper ) infront of about 30,000 people. That was probably a one minute gig (but a bit more in preparation).
Definitely 2015 when I did a show in Hong Kong for about one hundred Chinese businessmen – it was a charity and I was the auction item! I did a good show – they loved the gold glitter reveal of “Buddha” and my painting of the Hong Kong skyline looked really nice and all…. but when they auctioned the two paintings for charity (the charity was employing eye doctors to fix eyesight in rural areas of China – similar to the work the late Fred Hollows used to do) and they got $2.1 million dollars Hong Kong ($350,000 Australian dollars) I realised just how much money and change in the world these funds can make – that’s a lot of eyes fixed! That was definitely a surreal moment.
Jogging, tennis, playing Oztag, playing piano, watching cricket and the NRL and following the mighty Canterbury Bulldogs! This year is our year! (I’ve said that for the last five).