Jennifer Samet interviewed Katherine Bradford, a favorite painter of mine, for her column Beer with a Painter last month. They talk about Bradford's early life, slipping out a window to avoid a political dinner, and of course painting. When asked about the influence of place (Maine) on her work Bradford moved straight to painting
Check out my previous posts on Bradford here and here
What interests me the most is the language of painting – how people are able to say things using paint. When I first moved to Maine, I could see Marsden Hartley scenes. They were everywhere. Yet I was also aware of what Hartley had done to the clouds, for example, to make them his own: those vivid, wonderful clouds. Another example is John Marin, who painted the sea over and over again using excited, electric brushstrokes. Milton Avery, when he paints the sky and the waves and the sea, doesn’t do it “correctly” at all. He turns it on its side and experiments with color. You see it in paintings like “Rolling Surf” (1958), and in “Sea Grasses and Blue Sea” (1958) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I thought, “That is what I want to try. I like the interpretation and the invention these people are coming up with.”Read the full interview here
Check out my previous posts on Bradford here and here
 |
| Katherine Bradford, “Camping Trip” (2016), acrylic on canvas, 68 x 80 inches (courtesy CANADA, NYC) |
 |
| Katherine Bradford, “Bike Ride, Night” (2016), acrylic on canvas 68 x 80 inches (courtesy CANADA, NYC) |