A. Gwydhar Bratton was born in the artist colony of Taos, New Mexico in the wake of a lunar eclipse, so already you may guess that she is a pretty odd person, but the oddest fact of all is that she blames neither of these facts for her artistic bent: she blames the television. You see, back in the early eighties when Gwydhar was but a precocious tot, Taos, New Mexico got excellent light, fabulous rainbows, unique wind patterns and anthropolgical and geological marvels, but truly apalling television reception. Sure there were the early mornings of fuzzy episodes of Sesame Street and Mr Rogers Neighborhood, but more often the Bratton family's "Guide to Entertainment" was: "Gwydhar, go draw a picture." And so she did.
Like any normal self respecting child, Gwydhar would much rather have turned her brains into pudding in front of the television set. There were mornings where, forbidden to turn the television on because Mommy and Daddy wanted to sleep in, little Gwydhar made do by drawing a picture of Sesame Street and taping it to the television set so she could watch that instead.
This is possibly how her dream to become a film director got started.
Alas, the humble yet pastoral beginings couldn't last as the Bratton family moved to the Greater Chicagoland Area and Gwydhar's trials and tribulations; struggling against all odds and the unbearable adversity of a middle class suburban upbringing to achieve artisthood. It is a well known fact that good luck, prosperity, love, and happiness are never so under appreciated as by an aspiring artist seeking angst, horror, tradgedy, and visceral truth- especially when said aspiring artist is in her teens. Lacking such misadventures in real life, poor underpriveleged Gwydhar was instead forced to turn to her childhood imagination in order to create the appropriately bleak and gothic outlook on life that true artistry required. It was sometime in college before she realized that this whole "artist mindset" business was bull-doody.
Speaking of college, Gwydhar admittedly did not find her undergraduate years to be "the best four years of her life" as she was assured they would be. So, while she didn't find happiness in college, she did find that yet-uncharted realm of angst and insecurity that she had been seeking all her life. This was not very reassuring to someone who was generally thought to be shy and sensitive who had big ideas but generally thin (and easily sunburned) skin.
Luckily in recent years Gwydhar has been working on toughening herself up for the "real" world, and has found that she rather likes it in the urban wilds of Chicago working in the dog-eat-dog jungle of commercial art sales. She has also become involved in the up and coming Lucid Artist Co Op Gallery now located on Milwaukee Ave in the heart of Wicker Park. Should you ever be in the Chicago area she hopes you will be sure to stop in and see her most recent work.