Artist Katherine Bradford brought her light-hearted artistic process to life last Tuesday, speaking to students in the same playful manner in which she paints. Students received an inside look at a uniquely spontaneous artistic process in a lecture given at the Visual Arts Center. Bradford discussed the inspiration she finds in her chosen medium, tracing her artistic development through the course of her career.
Bradford said her interest in painting was piqued at the Bowdoin Museum of Art when she was living in Brunswick after college.
Bradford works primarily with oil to create abstract pieces that seem to show the world through an out-of-focus kaleidoscope. The vestigial figues of “Desire for Transport,” a 54” by 72” canvas piece, float lazily in oddly-shaped boats, exemplify her style, shaped from broad brush strokes and a generous application of paint.
Bradford did not take any art classes while an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College, but decided to become a painter after moving back to Maine post-graduation. Bradford found Bowdoin to be a major resource for her burgeoning career.
“When I began painting I was living just down the road from Bowdoin,” said Bradford. “I looked to the College as a way to learn more about art.”
Specifically, Bradford found inspiration in paintings exhibited at the Museum of Art.
“One was Marsden Hartley’s seascape and another was Andrew Wyeth’s painting of a lobsterman out on the open ocean at night hauling in his lobster trap in a sparkling blaze of light,” said Bradford. “If I organized my day just right I could slip into the exhibitions at the Museum just before I headed into town to buy groceries and then I could carry this burst of inspiration all through my shopping errands.”
Mark Wethli, director of the visual arts department, also played a major role in Bradford’s artistic development.
“Once I got to know Mark Wethli, he made me feel welcome at the College as a guest of the art department and a visiting artist,” said Bradford. “These visits helped me feel a part of what was going on at the college.”
Bradford has remained connected to the College ever since. After living in Maine for 11 years, she moved to New York and began renting her house to Bowdoin students during the academic year, but returns every summer. Generations of students have since rented the “Bradford House.”
“Often the students who rented my house would end up being art majors and I kept in touch with many of them,” said Bradford. “Two of them, Bryson Brodie and Chad McDermid, opened an art gallery in New York. Another one named Toby Ostrander was a renter at the house when a bad fire occurred—his entire CD collection melted; but we got through that and became friends. He is now the chief curator at the Miami Museum of Art.”
Bradford’s talk showcased her humorous and easy-going personality through her manner of presention—she was constantly joking and involving the audience—and also through her approach to making art.
Playfulness is a recurring theme in her work, and critic Peter Acheson called that quality of hers “something that could be called child-likeness or innocence.” For many viewers, it is this innocence that makes Bradford’s work so appealing.
“In reality, its extraordinarily hard to be childlike, and to look at the world with the same kind of wonder and openness as a little kid, while keeping a painting balanced and engaging,” wrote Devin Hardy ’13 in an email to The Orient. “[Bradford] has this wonderful mindset from another world and was so good at speaking in this kind of raw, wry way about her process. I think people overlook the value of being able to not take themselves so seriously, and to simply make something.”
Similar aspects of Bradford’s work appealed to Louisa Cannell ’13, who also attended the lecture.
“Bradford’s work is colorful and beautiful and carefree. Her attitude about her work also appeals to me, as she doesn’t seem bogged down in theory or the conceptual aspects like many artists are,” wrote Cannell in an email to the Orient.
“I don’t think I could have made this painting by thinking it up beforehand,” said Bradford, referring to a painting on a slide she was showing. “But I didn’t—I found it in the muck of the painting.”
This ability to find unexpected inspiration is a hallmark of Bradford’s artistic process.
“As she mentioned in her lecture, at some point she noticed how paint can look like water, which led her to painting things like swimmers and boats that interact with water,” wrote Wethli in an email to The Orient. “Importantly, it was noticing something about the nature of the paint that led her to this subject matter, not the other way around. Once she arrived at this imagery, it was still about the paint and how it behaves that gave form to these images, rather than imposing them on the painting.”
For Hardy, Bradford’s open-minded and spontaneous approach gave her confidence in her own artistic process.
“I can relate to her process, and it was so refreshing for me as an artist to hear some validation for my methods,” wrote Hardy.
Bradford summed up her approach best by showing a cartoon: a few surgeons are standing around a patient with surgical tools looking confused about how to begin. One surgeon says: “Let’s just start cutting and see what happens.”