TitleDeep Sea Divers
Artist
Katherine Bradford
(American, b. 1942)
Date2013
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 68 × 80 × 1 3/4 in.
SignedSigned on verso: Katherine Bradford /
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, May 11, 2016
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of the Artist, 2016
Object number2016.6
Label TextCurrently based in Brooklyn, Katherine Bradford originally began painting in Maine, where the sea became the longstanding source of inspiration in her practice. It was in this environment that she developed an affinity for the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder, the 19th-century American painter whose mysterious renderings of the ocean often verged on abstraction. In her work, Bradford depicts aquatic subjects including ships and swimmers - along with quirky superheroes - as elements within her abstract paintings that simultaneously appear before the viewer while melting back into her dreamlike compositions.In Deep Sea Divers, Bradford creates a sky of green and yellow bands that leads into a turquoise sea. An enormous burgundy ocean liner looms in the center over several figures in the water. The colors and forms evoke the spirituality of a Rothko painting, yet Bradford manages to balance this ominous, contemplative mood with a sense of ethereal playfulness. Repeatedly applying thinned-out layers of oil paint over long periods of time, the artist creates a ghostly aura around her subjects, which are embedded in rich and complex accumulations of color and texture. Of her subjects, the artist has stated "I'm dismantling icons, the ship and the Superman. I'm showing them as vulnerable, and yet we're used to seeing them as symbols of strength."
Deep Sea Divers was included in Phong Bui's 2013 Industry City exhibition "Come Together: Surviving Sandy," a monumental survey of more than 325 artists commemorating the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy and the storm's impact on the New York art community.
