DAWNS EARLY LIGHT, Marilynne Bradley, 2025, watercolor, 12 x 18 in. / 30.48 x 45.72 cm.

Geometric Motion in Architecture: Watercolors by Marilynne Bradley

December 31, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: DAWNS EARLY LIGHT, Marilynne Bradley, 2025, watercolor, 12 x 18 in. / 30.48 x 45.72 cm.

Marilynne Bradley’s watercolors transform familiar architectural spaces into dynamic systems of movement, rhythm, and light.

Marilynne Bradley is a watercolor artist whose work blends Cubist and Futurist influences, transforming architectural and natural spaces into dynamic geometric environments.

Drawing from the visual languages of Cubism and Futurism, her work fractures perspective and reconstructs space through sharply defined planes and intersecting lines. Rather than depicting buildings as static forms, Bradley renders them as environments in flux, places shaped as much by motion, perception, and energy as by structure itself.

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BRIDGE DECONSTRUCTION, Marilynne Bradley, 2020, watercolor, 22 x 30 in. / 55.88 x 76.2 cm.

A bridge becomes less a site of passage than a charged spatial engine in Bridge Deconstruction. Steel trusses and roadways are dismantled into angular lattices, their geometry stretched and compressed through shifting viewpoints. Warm yellows and oranges collide with cooler blues and purples, generating a sense of acceleration and tension. By converting organic curves into rigid linear frameworks, the scene takes on an almost mechanical intensity, emphasizing the psychological impact of engineered space rather than its literal appearance.

CHAPEL IN THE WOODS, Marilynne Bradley, 2023, watercolor, 18 x 12 in. / 45.72 x 30.48 cm.

In Chapel in the Woods, the atmosphere shifts toward introspection while maintaining the same structural rigor. Vertical lines echo tree trunks, allowing architecture and forest to merge into a single geometric field. Light filters through layered greens and golds, suggesting a quiet reverence shaped by both nature and human design. The chapel does not dominate the landscape; instead, it is absorbed into it, transformed into a rhythmic pattern that feels contemplative rather than monumental.

UNDER THE L, Marilynne Bradley, 2023, watercolor, 15 x 22 in. / 38.1 x 55.88 cm.

Urban infrastructure takes center stage in Under the L, where the elevated train structure becomes a corridor of overlapping planes and compressed depth. Diagonal beams and repeating supports pull the viewer forward, creating a sense of constant motion even in stillness. The palette intensifies, reds, blues, and neutrals intersect sharply, mirroring the pulse of city life below. The result is an immersive spatial experience that captures the psychological weight of moving through dense, constructed environments.

Across these works, Bradley consistently reimagines architecture as an active force rather than a backdrop. By breaking down and reconstructing space through geometric abstraction, she reveals how structure shapes mood, memory, and movement. Whether in forest, city, or transit space, her paintings invite viewers to experience architecture not as something observed from afar, but as something lived through, dynamic, immersive, and perpetually in motion.

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