Katherine Bradford’s new ‘Mother Paintings’ at Canada New York depict women caring for sick family members, offering the comfort of a lap and waiting for a school bus, but her signature abstract style upends traditional representations of moms. By avoiding identifying details, she creates symbolic characters and instead directs our focus to the vivid fields of color that make up what might otherwise be mundane scenes. Here, in ‘Mother Joins the Circus – Second Version,’ a mom is taken away, inducted into a new aspect of life by mysterious characters who literally turn things upside down. (On view at Canada Gallery through May 15th).
