Whitney Bedford is an American contemporary painter, using her own mark making to bring the original source material of her paintings into the realm of the imaginary. Layered with both ink and oil paint, romantic scenes of destruction, calm at sea, and migrating birds are manipulated to the point of abstraction, showing only vestiges of her starting point.
Bedford received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. She was the winner of the 2001 UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennale and received a Fulbright Graduate Fellowship from Hoschule der Kuenste, Berlin.
Bedford aligns herself with the historical school of naval painting, “trying to update it, or even capsize it, in a way that only a hybrid of educations and living on the edge of the California coast can do.” For Bedford this is a way of claiming rigid, academic imagery and making it her own. She states: “Sometimes it is the paint itself that sinks the images. Other times, I push the paintings to reduce their images to abstract forms or landscapes that connote a different space, one aged by time and impossible to revisit.”
There is a mercurial quality to Whitney Bedford’s work. Her paintings have a compositional turbulence and a distinctly ominous air – their listing ships, heavy seas, detached icebergs, temperamental landscapes and low horizons stirring up notions of the sublime – yet on closer look another language begins to emerge, one altogether more eloquent. Drawing on Bedford’s architectural training, the works are first drafted in fluid, angular marks made with ink often lost in overpainting. Swiftly overlayed with an application of paint that is both beautiful and cruel as it actively creates and destroys, the gestural brushwork and dark ink offer crisp linearity with a capricious, smudgy chaser.
Bedford’s work is featured in several collections: Eric Decelle, Brussels, Belgium; Francois Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Ginette Moulin and Guillaume Houzé Contemporary Art Collection, Paris, France; Hammer Museum, Hammer Contemporary Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, Miami, FL; and The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK.
Bedford currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, including teaching as a guest lecturer at the University of California.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Vedute, Vielmetter Los Angeles, US
Whitney Bedford, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, US
2022
Veduta, Art:Concept, Paris, FR
Imaginary, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
2021
Whitney Bedford, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, US
Veduta (Vuillard Vineyard), Vielmetter Los Angeles, US
2020
Reflections on the Anthropocene, Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles, US
Nevertheless, Carrie Secrist Gallery Online, Chicago, US
Nevertheless, Vielmetter Los Angeles Online, Los Angeles, US
2018
Numinous, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, US
Bohemia, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
2017
The Left Coast, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, US
Bardo Parade, Art:Concept, Paris, FR
2016
East of Eden, Carrie Secrist, Chicago, US
Lost and Found, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
2015
Night and Day, Taymour Grahne, New York, US
West of Eden, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, US
2014
Whitney Bedford, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, US
Love Letters, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, US
2013
This for That, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
2010
Whitney Bedford: From here to there, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
2008
Arcadia, Art:Concept, Paris, FR
2007
Whitney Bedford: The Escape Artist Series, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, US
2004
Exposition personnelle, Art:Concept, Paris, FR
2000
Whitney Bedford, Hotel de Ville, Biot, FR
1999
Whitney Bedford, Fulbright-Kommission, Berlin, DE
1998
Whitney Bedford, BEB Gallery, Providence, US
1997
Whitney Bedford, Sokolofska #124 Space, Prague, CZ
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
Inside/Outside, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, US
2022
Plants Now!, Vielmetter Los Angeles, US
Recollections May Vary, Starkwhite, Queenstown, NZ
2021
Was/Is/Ought, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, US
Do You Think It Needs A Cloud?, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, US
Slippery Painting, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
20 Years, Vielmetter Los Angeles, US
2020
Nasty Women, Gavlak Gallery, California, US
2019
Shall we go, you and I while we can, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, US
Kaleidescope, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2018
How They Ran, Over the Influence, Los Angeles, US
Evolver, LA Louver, Los Angeles, US
New on the Wall (N.O.W.), Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, US
C’est Comme Vous Voulez – As You Like It, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, FR
2017
Anniversary Show, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, US
2016
A Verdant Summer, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, US
Painting: A Transitive Space, ST PAUL ST Gallery, Auckland, NZ
2015
La femme de trente ans, Art:Concept, Paris FR
2014
Lovers, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ
Sargent’s Daughters, Sargent’s Daughters, New York, US
2013
Summer Group Show, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, US
2012
Facing the Sublime in Water, CA, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, US
2011
Everything Must Go, A Project with Ceramica Suro Guadalajara, Mexico, organized by Jose Noe Suro and Eduardo Sarabia, Casey Kaplan, New York, US
2010
The Gleaners: Works from the Sarah and Jim Taylor Collection, Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, US
Five from LA, Galerie Lelong, New York, US
Bagna Cauda, Gallerie Art Concept, Paris, FR
Houdini: Art and Magic, 1919-1949, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI, US
2009
This Is Killing Me, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, US
2007
PX – Snow Falls in the Mountains, Curated by Jan Bryant, St Paul St Gallery, University of Auckland, Auckland, NZ
Poker, Galleria Monica de Cardenas, Milan, IT
COLLECTIONS
Eric Decelle, Brussels, BE
Francois Pinault Collection, Paris, FR
Ginette Moulin and Guillaume Houzé Contemporary Art Collection, Paris, FR
Hammer Museum, Hammer Contemporary Collection, Los Angeles, US
Jumex Collection, Mexico City, MX
Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, US
Pizutti Collection, Columbus, US
Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, Miami, US
The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK