2017 Catalogue Archive

Dryly painted in smeared layers, the works of Katherine Bradford depict fleshy figures glowing in ambiguous spaces of saturated color. Bradford punctures the abstract bands of blue in Diver Over Rock with a curved bather and heavy boulder, both simply captured with smudges of pink and navy. Bradford’s faux-naive style recalls Philip Guston, though her swimmers slyly modernize the works of Cezanne, Renoir, and Matisse. While her subject matter rarely strays from her favorites – swimmers, boats, Superman, and spaceships make up almost her entire oeuvre – her paintings elicit a variety of emotions and display a unique mix of joy, wonder, and vulnerability. Bradford’s paintings are in public and private collections across the US and her show, FOCUS: Katherine Bradford, will be on view in November at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.