Mother Paintings
Katherine Bradford
“Sometimes I ask myself what [Mark] Rothko would make of what I'm doing, whether he would be really disgusted that I put [the human figure] back in. Because that was a triumph for a lot of painters to get rid of the figure.”
Katherine Bradford's Paintings are mildly
clunky abstractions filled with domestic symbolism. Motifs and
techniques from past bodies of work reappear here, with more or less
success. The large canvases are filled with imposing blocks of
color, awkwardly positioned, somewhat cartoon-like figures, and thin
washes of acrylic paint. But her repetitive and limited approach
unifies the work. The color fields are consistently flat, the
figures are invariably outlined, and patches of thinned out acrylic
are invariably if haphazardly, placed on top. Bradford makes it
clear we are to take the figures lightly; there is humor in the
awkwardness of the occasional big foot, or short arm, or block-like
head. The figures, some of which are larger than life, are placed
close to the edges of the canvas, as if they can barely fit into the
picture plane, causing nice compositional tension. By contrast, in
her earlier Pool Paintings, a great deal of compositional
energy was expended on constructing a deep and vast space in which
the unimposing figures are mere blobs of a single color. In this
recent series, the figures are the center of attention and the space
around them serves simply to contain and balance. The arms and hands
of the figures all express one thing - comfort. And this brings us
to a clear theme of the show, for this, comfort, is one of the
central tasks of motherhood. The sense of warmth and domestic
coziness in these paintings, especially in the gestures of the
figures, surely also speaks to what we all can use as we make our
way through this long pandemic. The scale of the mother figure in
paintings such as Motherhood, Mother's Lap, and
Guest for Dinner speak to the role of the mother from a
child’s point of view. The mother's arms stretch unusually far to
console her child in Motherhood, the mother's lap is
unusually big in Mother's LapMother's Lap, and so able to
accommodate all of her several children comfortably; in all of these
paintings, the mother's presence takes over the room.
The bright reds, oranges, and pinks accentuate the light-hearted
nature of the paintings; the frequent pale yellow adds a subtle
glow. The dark outlines of the figures accentuate the figures’
clunkiness, but in doing so, express the artist's confidence in her
constructions. Each painting has some odd element or other that the
viewer can't help but notice and attend to: a glowing pair of white
undies, lumpy yellow circles for boobs, a funky pair of tights, a
scribbled barely human face, a clownishly long bowling shoe. As much
as these paintings reference classic color field abstraction, these
odd elements also pull them towards a world of eccentric personality
and striking atmosphere. It's as if Bradford is constructing the
world as it might be when seen through the eyes of a child. The
color blocks stand for auras or feelings, the odd symbols and
fuzzed-out areas stand for things not completely understood. The
grandeur of the mother figure dominates the child's vision,
underscoring the role of the mother as the most important thing in
the child's mind. A mix of satisfying and sometimes frustrating
elements, it is a consistently engaging show.
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This project was coded by Alina Ananyeva, and it is open-sourced
