…I felt I’d gotten the light I wanted. It looked and felt like water at night. The layering and pale pink over dark purple created the effect of light bouncing off a surface and I recognized a kind of transparent glow that had happened in the course of painting the barges…
Katherine Bradford, “Night Divers.” Oil on canvas, 66 x 80 in. 2013.
© Katherine Bradford. Courtesy of the artist and Life on Mars Gallery, Bushwick
This painting is one of the few instances in my life when I listened to my own advice and followed it. After painting all morning on “Night Divers” I stepped back, looked at what I’d done and made a vow to leave it alone, stop, turn it to the wall and not try and “fix it up.” Thus, “Night Divers” remained slightly raw with drips, cross outs and smudges as an integral part of the painting.
The reason I stopped when I did was I felt I’d gotten the light I wanted. It looked and felt like water at night. The layering and pale pink over dark purple created the effect of light bouncing off a surface and I recognized a kind of transparent glow that had happened in the course of painting the barges moored in the harbor. The diving figures give the viewer a sense of the scale of the large boat like shapes and keep the painting from being read as abstract.
…I felt I’d gotten the light I wanted. It looked and felt like water at night. The layering and pale pink over dark purple created the effect of light bouncing off a surface and I recognized a kind of transparent glow that had happened in the course of painting the barges…
Rothko is an artist I feel close to especially in this painting. He would no doubt be horrified that I put divers plunging off his two parallel rectangles. Diving into dark water at night, to me, is an elemental experience, so in that sense maybe Rothko would be a little sympathetic.
Katherine Bradford lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY and Brunswick, ME.
Editor’s Recs:
Katherine Bradford ~~~AUGUST~~~ at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (29 Jun – 1 Sep 2013)
Watch: Katherine Bradford with James Kalm on The Triumph of Human Painting, her February 2013 curatorial project for Bull and Ram
Read snips from our conversation with Painting Impossible curator, painter Michael David here and here.
Follow our discussion on the possibilities of painting here.
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