Conrad’s current series is entitled Wanderworld. He depicts both human people and animal-like creatures wandering through primal landscapes dominated by conflict, instability and danger. The creatures are caught up in their daily lives going to and fro, while the world is obscured in mystery and uncertainty.
Traditional Flemish paintings and Contemporary illustrative artists working today influence Conrad. Iconic female figures dominate many of the paintings, representing either an antidote to a highly confusing and mechanized world or a catalyst to our weaknesses and urges. Conrad’s collision of old world and new creates a contemporary primitive edge to bold, colorful paintings.
Conrad watched his artist father paint. Emulating his dad, he began to draw in every free moment. His parents’ dual religious beliefs had a profound effect on his work. His mother a devout Catholic, with a strong belief in Indonesian folklore, summoned a witch doctor for one of Conrad’s childhood illnesses. His father is a Zen Buddhist. This juxtaposition of beliefs has borne out a unique untutored figurative style. His surrealist paintings vibrate with the strangeness of a colorful dream. His portraits are a meditation on a quiet moment face to face with the subject. They allow you to interact intimately with each subject.
Conrad’s paintings present an enduring vision of beauty in humanity and nature while reflecting the instability and ambiguity of everyday.
Conrad was born in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He lived his teenage years in a poor working class section of Lowell, Mass. He moved to Los Angeles for eighteen years in 1989. Conrad has shown his work around Los Angeles and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Celebrities and collectors alike commissioned his work. Conrad works in oils, acrylics, and digital medium.
He returned to Massachusetts with his wife Amy in 2006.