Bradford’s figures swim, float and wander through the dark and dreamy landscapes of their canvases

Since the 1970s, painter 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 biography text by her children, Laura and Arthur Bradford, that offers a personal look at the artist’s life and work, and an overview essay by Austrian curator Sandro Droschl. The book compiles over 100 artworks surveying Bradford’s paintings from 2015 until today, focusing on her recent series entitled Swimmers and Mother Paintings dealing with her own vision of motherhood and womanhood.

Katherine Bradford (born 1942) lives and works in New York City and Brunswick, Maine. She has exhibited at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum and most recently in a solo exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, which traveled to the Frye Museum in Seattle. Bradford was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2012.