Katherine Bradford. Water Nurses, 2016; acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Adams and Ollman. Photo: Christine Taylor.

Ashley Stull Meyers: The juxtapositions you create in your paintings are often lyrical, poetic ones. With what metaphorical value do you view water in relationship with the acts of “diving” and “dreaming”?

Katherine Bradford: “Diving” introduces the idea that the viewer will see in this group of paintings a lot of people in bathing suits ready to immerse themselves in water. “Dreaming” is a word that pairs nicely in sound with “diving” and introduces the notion that the tone and setting for the swimmers may be invented and fantastical.

Water and paint are wonderfully liquid and ripe for experiment. Both can be transparent and hold onto glints of another color. For the past year I’ve used only acrylic paint because I love the florescent colors and the watery texture. Every time my brush hits the surface of the canvas I seem to get a different stroke, and many of them recall waves or rivulets or splashes of water, but the real value is that water serves as a metaphor for whatever we’re floating on, and jumping into, and traveling through.

Katherine Bradford. Shell Seeker, 2016; acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Adams and Ollman. Photo: Christine Taylor.

ASM: We’ve seen a variance of treatments of water and air in your work, but several of these new paintings are situated in outer space—or at least worlds that are less tangible and familiar. What’s behind this choice of environment?

KB: I want to examine large themes that exist in any time or place—themes like isolation, community, play, or wonder. My paintings are full of awe for our place as small beings in an immense scheme of things. Is that a romantic notion?

I feel my settings are universal and timeless and exist in the past as well as the future. The deeper, darker palette came first [in making Divers and Dreamers] and suggested outer space at night. Outer space is a joy for any painter of large color fields. You’ve probably already guessed that my favorite colors are dark blues and purples. It’s full of the mystery of a dark, unchartered universe and gives me boundless opportunities for the invention of multiple light sources.

ASM: To what degree to you feel inspired by your predecessors in Color Field?

KB: Mark Rothko isn’t necessarily considered a Color Field painter, but I love his very nuanced fields of color. Other strong influences are Milton Avery, who invented wonderfully original ways to paint the sea with waves, and Marsden Hartley, who paints human beings who look vulnerable and a bit odd.

Katherine Bradford. Superman and Acolytes, 2016; acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Adams and Ollman. Photo: Christine Taylor.

ASM: Let’s talk about heroes. You’re painting Superman, but also altruistic figures like nurses. What’s attractive to you about representing this thread of humanity? Does every hero need acolytes?

KB: I’m so glad you see the nurses as an extension of my interest in heroes. It’s the first time I’ve used them in a painting, and it came from seeing bits of red poking through the paint. I imagined little red crosses and capes, and as I was giving each one more form, they started to resemble nurses more than superheroes. Either of those groups would have been fine for the painting. More than anything, I need upbeat, colorful characters to populate my invented landscapes.

Many of my Superman paintings show him soaring into the air in response to a call to rescue. He’s alone and he’s flying. He’s separated from any trace of the Earth, so the painting showing him standing above his so-called acolytes is an exception. I did that for visual reasons. The bottom of the painting really needed some points of light.

Katherine Bradford. Couple on the Moon, 2016; acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Adams and Ollman. Photo: Christine Taylor.

ASM: There are a number of introspective, solitary figures in Divers and Dreamers, too. Paintings like Shell Seeker (2016) really punctuate the ones of couples, like Couple on the Moon (2016). Is there a difference in the way you paint these two moments? How do you communicate loneliness? And is it hopeful?

KB: The word I would use is “solitary,” not necessarily “lonely.” And if all these figures are acting out a journey that is parallel to the one an artist is on, then I’d say that they are calm, focused, and definitely full of hope.

Divers and Dreamers is on view at Adams and Ollman in Portland, Oregon, through June 3, 2016.

Conny Purtill. The Ground, 2014; installation view, Adams and Ollman Gallery, Portland, OR. Courtesy of the Artists and Adams and Ollman.

Mack McFarland: Conny, I am wondering about language and how it operates in your process and work. The press release has some phrases in quotes such as, “…until the ground is exhausted, at which time it is ‘neutralized’ with pencil marks…” And later, “available spaces,” and even the title of the show, “ground.”

Conny Purtill: A phrase like “the ground” generates a specific force that pulls me toward things and ideas and people. It is a force that I’ve come to accept as natural and profound (and I would say it has no less an impact on me than a force like gravity). Words naturally push and pull against a thing or a person or an idea—these forces are attractive to me probably because they take such little energy to generate, and once they are generated, give so much energy back. That might be how language operates in the process and work.

(from left to right) Conny Purtill. Handheld Ground, 2012-2014; gesso, India ink and pencil on wood; 14 x 31 1/2 x 1/4 in. Conny Purtill. The Ground: Smoking Quagmire, 2009; graphite and ink on paper; 9 1/2 x 8 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Adams and Ollman Gallery.

MM: Do you share this language with your collaborators? Do you think of Culpa, Heikes, Jackson Hutchins, McGee, and Norsten as collaborators?

CP: Yes, I do share these phrases with the people I choose to have relationships with. But that said, I do not expect my found phrases will generate useful forces for other people the way they do for me. I share them only because it is what I have to share.

And no, I don’t find the word “collaborator” represents the relationship I’m having with any one of these people. I gift people neutralized grounds as a way of generating a force that pulls us together. The object itself (and what ultimately happens to or with it) is not something I care too much about. I’d rather find a word that represents the relationship—maybe “love”—or a word that represents that specific force…um, I might go with “love” again.

Conny Purtill. The Ground, 2014; installation view, Adams and Ollman Gallery, Portland, OR. Courtesy of the Artists and Adams and Ollman.

Jay Heikes: I love you too, Conny! For me, a white ground has always seemed suspect. I work so hard to produce the patina of an aged authenticity in my work, which can feel satisfying aesthetically but also ironic in the faux tribal sense. When Conny first approached me with the idea of gifting one of the “grounds,” I was relieved that I didn’t have to start from a bleached space. Instead I was challenged with the thought of whether I should touch the ground at all. But after some contemplation, I realized that a certain kind of all-over painting had been beaten to death for me, rendered as powerful as a swatch of fabric. If I was given this incredible ground, my job was to provide an incredible figure for that ground so they could harmonize like a band, like Wings. So in that way I see it as a collaboration, but I would assign to Conny the role of an inspirer, a McCartney.

Todd Norsten: I think that Conny had told me about the process of making the grounds, but I never thought about them as regimented to the degree articulated in your question, Mack—they just looked really cool. So Conny’s description of the collaboration as more like love is appropriate for me. Plus, Conny is like Yoda without the gimmicky talk and green, wrinkly skin.

I was more interested in another idea that Conny and Jay were talking about, that was mostly a joke but discussed somewhat seriously—the idea of making a one-stroke painting. Sort of the Holy Grail of painting that exists somewhere between children’s books and sophomore painting class, but only achieved through years of training and Bill Murray’s enlightenment in Caddyshack. The paint that I put on the ground was informed by conversations with Conny and the one-stroke painting idea, so the force that he explains as love seems like an apt description of the interaction.

Todd Norsten and Conny Purtill. Your Ass Is Grass, 2013; oil, gesso, India ink, and pencil on canvas; 22 x 17 in. Courtesy of the Artists and Adams and Ollman Gallery.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Force, the ground, gravity, love—such beautiful language, Conny: simple, profound, and totally apparent in those works. I thought of Conny the whole time I lived with his ground. It felt like something between us, and that was an inspiration. It was always a conversation with him. The size is such a factor in this, too. It’s intimate and every inch of it has been combed over—that kind of attention is felt. I think it contributes a lot to this force he speaks of.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Conny Purtill. Table of Contents, 2014; gesso, India ink, pencil, acrylic, oil, paper, glazed ceramic, and found plate on canvas;
17 x 22 in. Courtesy of the Artists and Adams and Ollman Gallery.

MM: Conny, your Purtill Family Business is well known, perhaps even infamous for the design of artist and exhibition catalogs. The structure of your exhibition included a built-in, X-shaped partition in the middle of the space, which seems to echo the pages of an open book or even the fold-out pages of the 2006 Whitney Biennial catalog that Purtill Family Business designed. Do you approach an exhibition layout in the same way you do book design?

CP: Regardless of whether you are thinking about a book space or a room space, they are both, in my situation, about servicing the art. Design that does not function as a service to something is not design—they are the same in that way. For the space of the exhibition, I set up a group of isolated triangular spaces that one would circle through. The fundamental element—the space that most interested me—was the individual triangular space. In each triangle, one single work appeared on each plane of the triangle, with just enough room for one person to stand in the middle of the triangle. This was the only space I was interested in building. This simple construction was the best way I could imagine to build a space that illuminated the specific forces we were speaking about earlier and offer the opportunity for a single person to be immersed in the dynamic in an intimate way, hopefully compounding the energy. Keeping the architectural form simple was really important because I wanted the space to be as much about the forces generated as it was about each individual work. I wanted to build a space in which one could see and feel complexly.

Mack McFarland is the curator of the Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Since 2006, he has organized or curated over 30 exhibitions, with a focus on artists whose practices involve social or politically engaged themes.