Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford
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Painter Katherine Bradford approaches abstraction and figurative painting in a wholly personal and unpredictable way. Her canvases, comprised of multiple thin, semi-transparent layers of acrylic paint, with hints of pentimenti, are built up over months and sometimes years. Drawn to aquatic themes, Bradford likens water to the act of painting both are immersive and wild, yet controllable. The work is populated by a cast of characters from swimmers and bathers to superman and superheroes and, most recently, mothers suspended in expanses of vibrant colour. These figures, who often defy society s expectations, oftentimes serve as surrogates for the artist herself: mother, painter, and lesbian coming of age at the turn of the twenty first century. The volume includes two substantive essays: by Jaime DeSimone, curator of the exhibition, and Nancy Princenthal, the well-known critic and historian who has devoted much of her writing to women artists. The book also includes an interview with the artist conducted by DeSimone and an extensive illustrated chronology of the artist s life.
Jaime de Simone is Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic Curator of Contemporary Art at the Portland Museum of Art. Prior to joining the PMA in 2018, she was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville, where she helped grow the permanent collection and curated exhibitions such as A Dark Place of Dreams: Louise Nevelson with Chakaia Booker, Lauren Fensterstock, and Kate Gilmore. At the PMA, she has overseen the exhibitions Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago and Ragnar Kjartansson: Scenes from Western Culture. Nancy Princenthal is a New York-based art writer. She is the author of Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames & Hudson, 2015) and Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s (Thames & Hudson, 2019).