Katherine Bhernhardt Art for Sale: Prints & Originals

Katherine Bernhardt emerged as a distinctive voice in the Contemporary Art world with her bold, expressive paintings. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Bernhardt's artistic journey began at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she honed her skills before moving to New York City to complete her MFA at the School of Visual Arts.

Bernhardt's early work gained attention for her energetic portraits of fashion models, which she painted from magazine clippings. These portraits, characterised by their loose, gestural style and vibrant colour palette, paved the way for her explorations into pattern and pop culture.

As her career progressed, Bernhardt's work evolved to incorporate a wider range of subjects, from everyday objects to tropical motifs. Her large-scale ‘pattern paintings’, which began to emerge in the mid-2000s, have become her signature style, featuring a playful array of items such as cigarettes, tropical fruit, and animals arranged in colourful, rhythmic compositions.

Bernhardt's artistic evolution took a significant turn in the mid-2000s when she began to incorporate patterns inspired by traditional textiles from Morocco and West Africa into her work. This shift was influenced by her travels and her husband's Moroccan heritage, leading to a series of abstract paintings that laid the groundwork for her later 'pattern paintings'.

In 2008, Bernhardt’s artist book titled The Magnificent Excess of Snoop Dogg was published. The book vibrantly encapsulates her eclectic and expressive style. Offering a deep dive into Bernhardt's world, the book juxtaposes her bold, scrappily painted portraits of fashion models, celebrities, and consumer culture icons alongside the media images she uses as source material. The book features a mix of studio snapshots, candid photography, and essays by art critics like Nick Stillman and painter Lisa Ruyter, providing insight into Bernhardt's creative process and a commentary on the saturated, image-driven culture that inspires her.

Bernhardt's work has been exhibited internationally. Notable exhibitions include FOCUS at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2017 and Done with Xanax at CANADA gallery in New York in 2020. Her paintings are held in several prestigious collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

In 2015, Bernhardt painted a mural depicting fruits, cigarettes and toucans. Located in Los Angeles, it is a bold and playful painting covering the exterior wall of Venus Over Los Angeles gallery. The large-scale composition, with its saturated purples, pinks, and greens, embodies her distinctive approach, playfully blending consumer symbols with nature. This mural reflects her ability to combine humour and pop culture references while transforming urban spaces into accessible, energetic artworks.
The iconic Pink Panther series by Bernhardt was inspired by her stay at the iconic Royal Hawai’ian Hotel, also known as the Pink Palace. Immersed in the hotel's overwhelming pink decor — from towels and sheets to sunsets and pancakes — Bernhardt was constantly surrounded by the shade. Combined with her son Khalifa's fascination with The Pink Panther cartoons, which played continuously on his phone during their trip, Bernhardt began integrating the Pink Panther figure into her large-scale canvases and lithographs. The Pink Panther's laid-back demeanour, depicted lounging on pink furniture, encapsulates the humour and whimsy that Bernhardt brings to her loud, playful compositions.
Bernhardt's fascination with consumer culture is evident in her recurring use of branded household items such as Duracell batteries, and Doritos. This focus was cultivated during a casual trip to her local Schnucks supermarket in St. Louis, where she identified these ordinary objects as sources of creative inspiration. Bernhardt's selection process hinges on sensory appeal—choosing items for their colours, textures, and branding rather than their functionality. Her use of mundane objects reflects her broader artistic practice, where she melds the ordinary with the extraordinary in large, expressive paintings that embrace humour and accessibility. Household items, when arranged in Bernhardt's colourful, chaotic compositions, take on new meaning as both whimsical symbols and critiques of consumerism.