Katherine Bradford

Since the 1970s, Katherine Bradford has unapologetically blazed her own path in the art world, painting daily, and building a community of like-minded artists in both Maine and New York. Bradford paints with a formal inventiveness and a shifting sense of figure and ground, giving narrative weight to her characters who may appear as heroes or lovers, families or couples, businessmen or isolated individuals. Her chromatic scenes, painted in many transparent layers of acrylic, transmit a light-filled quality, and offer metaphorical possibilities as they veer between humor, pathos, and abstraction.

This reference monograph of her work features an essay by London-based art critic Allie Biswas that reflects on the metaphysical nature of Bradford’s work, an interview with fellow artist and writer Daniel Gerwin, a narrative biographical text by her children Laura and Arthur Bradford that offers a personal look at the artist’s life and work, as well as an overview essay by Graz’s Halle für Kunst Director Sandro Droschl, which provides an overview of the artist’s work. The book compiles over 100 artworks surveying the painter’s oeuvre from 2015 to today, focusing in particular on her recent “Swimmers” and “Mother Paintings” series, which deal with her own vision of motherhood and womanhood.

Katherine Bradford (*1942) is a painter who lives and works in New York City and Brunswick, Maine. She has exhibited widely at institutions such as MoMA P.S.1 and the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and most recently in a solo exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, which traveled to the Frye Museum, Seattle. Her work is included in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and The Menil Collection. Bradford was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, and a Joan Mitchell Grant in 2012.