November 2, 2019

Katherine Bradford at Mason Gross

Katherine Bradford will present a lecture in the Visiting Artist series this week.
Wednesday, November 6th from 7:00 P.M. to 8:15 P.M.

Rutgers - Mason Gross School of the Arts
Department of Art & Design
Civic Square Building, Room 110
33 Livingston Ave, New Brunswick, NJ.

DID YOU KNOW? Interesting tidbits* about Katherine Bradford:

1. It was harder for Bradford to come out about being a painter than to come out about being gay.

2. Bradford's 1970s studio in Maine was also a barn.

3. Bradford once jumped out of a window and ran to her studio to get out of a schmoozy lunch.

4. Some of Bradford's early inspirations include: Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Milton Avery, Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz.

5. Rather than dirt or pigment, Bradford sees paint as having properties of alchemy.

6. Throughout her career, Bradford has taken upon herself to schedule studio visits with artists and she still refers to her notes from these visits.

7. One of the most difficult lessons Bradford has endured as an artist is to take ownership of being her own unique type of artist.


Image descriptions: (Left) The artist, Katherine Bradford, covered in paint strokes. She is wearing red round glasses, a pinkish red shirt cut down the neck and black pants with an orange stripe down each side. The artist has short gray hair and is sitting in a chair on a drop cloth (both also covered in paint splatter). (Right) Painting by Katherine Bradford of abstract figures and forms: a green starry night represented by tiny mint green splatters and faint forrest green large star shapes; a white tent with various people swimming and lounging tipping their toes in a blue and purple body of water. (Images from Erin Little Photography)

"Katherine Bradford is a contemporary American artist known for her luminous paintings which merge abstraction with representational motifs, as seen in her work Fear of Waves (2015). Referencing outer space, Superman, Albert Pinkham Ryder’s nocturnal paintings, and the glowing colors of Mark Rothko, Bradford builds up her surfaces in thin washes that absorb and emanate light with an eerie beauty. 'What interests me the most is the language of painting—how people are able to say things using paint,' she reflected. Born in 1942 in New York, NY, she attended Bryn Mawr College and later received her MFA from SUNY Purchase. The artist currently divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and Brunswick, ME. Today, Bradford’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Smith College Museum in Maine, the Worcester Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among others." - artnet

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series is organized by the Rutgers MFA program and includes weekly lectures, studio visits and critiques by luminaries working across a wide spectrum of mediums.

Free and open to the public.

Wheelchair Accessible; ASL/CART available on request.
Contact Cassandra one week prior to event:
coliveras@mgsa.rutgers.edu or 848-932-5399

*Source: Hyperallergic.com, "Beer with a Painter: Katherine Bradford" by Jennifer Samet, September 17, 2016.