Artist Katherine Bradford was born in New York City in 1942 and raised in Connecticut. She earned a BA from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and began her career in Maine in the early 1970s, where she co-founded the Union of Maine Visual Artists and wrote for The Maine Times. In 1979, Bradford moved back to the New York area to immerse herself in contemporary art, earning an MFA from SUNY Purchase. She would eventually go on to teach at SUNY Purchase as well as Illinois State University, Ohio State University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Yale School of Art, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
Renowned for her evocative figural paintings, especially those featuring swimmers, boats, and superheroes, Bradford blends representational, abstract, and metaphorical elements in her work. Many of her compositions likewise incorporate humor and possess a cryptic quality generated from Bradford's fluid, inside-out process, such that the meaning of particular paintings often eludes the artist. Bradford's paintings are characterized by rich colors, fluid brushwork, and an exploration of themes like vulnerability, community, and heroism, with more recent works featuring larger, multi-figure compositions that delve into personal and collective themes such as race, gender, and identity.
Bradford's career took off later in life, with international exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Campoli Presti, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Brooklyn Museum, and elsewhere. Her work is now included in the collections of prestigious institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Dallas Museum of Art. Bradford has received numerous accolades, such as awards from the John Simon Guggenheim, Joan Mitchell, and Pollock-Krasner foundations, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among various public art commissions, she has produced glass mosaic murals for the New York City Subway. Today, Bradford splits her time painting between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Brunswick, Maine.
