Katherine Bernhardt
Fast, wet, oversized patterns of cigarettes, sharks, toilet paper and Pink Panther.
Katherine Bernhardt was born in St Louis in 1975 and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her early work was fashion-magazine portraiture painted rapidly and roughly; since about 2013 the paintings have been what she calls pattern paintings — large canvases in which a single motif or a small set of them is repeated across the surface in loose, saturated acrylic and spray paint. The vocabulary is deliberately banal and consumer-facing: cigarettes, watermelon, bananas, toilet roll, basketballs, Nike shoes, sharks, and licensed characters including the Pink Panther. She has worked between New York, St Louis and Puerto Rico.
The paintings are unique and large, and scale is the main driver within the body of work, followed by which motif a canvas carries — the recurring characters are not equally sought. The surfaces are thinly painted and absorbent, spray paint sits on top of acrylic, and they mark easily, so condition and framing history are worth checking properly. Works on paper and a modest number of editions exist. The name is often written Bernhardt with the r before the n, and misspellings circulate widely in listings.
If you own a work by Katherine Bernhardt
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