Born in Syracuse, New York, Bradley Walker Tomlin was a painter whose signature work combined Abstract Expressionism with his early interest in Cubism. He was an early pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, and much of his work was highly decorative with sensuous designs. Tomlin was also an art educator, teaching in 1932 to 1933 at Buckley School; 1932 to 1941 at Sarah lawrence College; and 1933 to 1934 at Dalton School in New York City.
He showed early talent, and by the time he had graduated from Syracuse University in 1921 had earned many awards and professional commissions. He moved to New York City from where he became a successful illustrator of magazine covers for Conde Nast publications while continuing his fine art. This early work had a variety of styles from Art Deco to sentimental Realism.
From 1923 to 1924, he went to England and France and studied in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. In the late 1930s, he changed his style from modified realism to a more decorative Cubism combined with vegetative forms of Surrealism.
In the mid-1940s, he was influenced by Abstract Expressionism through his close friends Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, and Robert Motherwell. On this style, he put his own stamp of juxtaposing separate objects within Cubist planes. By 1947 until his death in New York in 1953, he was doing totally abstract works with thickened lines emerging from Cubist grids.