Katherine Bradford

Katherine Bradford (b. 1942, New York) paints vibrant canvases that place characters, including mothers, superheroes, and swimmers, in abstract fields of saturated and sumptuous color.  Bradford’s subjects, which include isolated houses in addition to people in their underwear, often appear vulnerable and exposed. When describing her draw to the nighttime ocean as subject, Bradford explained that it had“everything a painter might need: endless mystery and lack of boundaries, hidden stories and dramatic light… who we are, how we fit in…how [we] look and [are] with one another,” as the artist put it, she uses strategies of abstraction and androgyny to explore ideas of self and identity.

Bradford’s work in housed in numerous public collections including: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn NY, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR, and many more.

The artist lives and works in Portland, ME.