Katherine Bradford
Motherhood, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
80 × 68 inches (203.2 × 172.7 cm)

In Motherhood, Bradford renders figures with her signature luminous hues and buoyant forms, locating the intimate bond between parent and child within a space of suspended wonder. The work’s simple composition belies a depth of feeling: color and gesture become proxies for the rhythms of care, presence, and protection that are otherwise unnameable. Here the maternal figure is not an archetype but a singular moment of connection, captured with a gentle insistence that resists easy narrative.

about the artist

Katherine Bradford stages her figures in chromatic fields of deep blues, murky reds, and nocturnal violets, where swimmers, superheroes, and solitary bodies drift between buoyancy and vulnerability. Her loose, almost naive brushwork belies a careful calibration of mood, allowing humor and melancholy to surface at once. In these suspended environments—part sea, part sky, part psyche—Bradford paints not heroic narratives, but quiet states of becoming, where uncertainty itself feels luminous.