Charlie Brady was born in New York of Irish American parents. He studied at the Art Students League, where his teachers included Reginald Marsh and John Groth.

This was the period when abstract expressionism was breaking into the consciousness of the American art world. Brady met de Kooning and saw Jackson Pollock and he became friendly with Franz Kline. He said, “Kline was the daddy of the young painters” like himself.

He served in the US Navy in World War ll. At one time he worked as a guard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He held his first one man show in the Urban Gallery in 1955.

Brady moved to Ireland in 1956 and painted the Irish countryside. He returned to New York in 1958 and moved back to Ireland in 1959. He spent some time in Spain but returned to Ireland and was a founder member of the Independent Artists Group. He exhibited regularly at The Taylor Galleries. His scale was usually small and he said that what interested chiefly was ‘quality’, that is to say, sheer painterly touch.   The general consensus, among painters, that he achieved this and very consistently.

From 1976 to 1983 he lectured in the National College of Art and Design. He was elected an honory member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1994