Toco Toucan Toucano (2020)

Counter Editions is pleased to announce a new limited edition print by Katherine Bernhardt. 'Toco Toucan Toucano' (2020) was created during Katherine's lockdown in Guatemala. Printed in our Margate studio, the nine colour lithographic print is an edition of 150. 

Gregarious and brash, Katherine Bernhardt's paintings are at once effortless and carefully balanced, predicated on the classic composition of the grid while working Warhol’s maxim of ‘liking things’ then painting them. An array of objects are first traced out with fast lines of bright spray paints, in this case tropical birds she saw on her regular trips to Puerto Rico. The shapes created are then loosely filled with various densities of acrylic paint, varying from straight out of the tube to watery washes. Full-bodied and electric, her palette is a harmony of opposites, such as day-glo pink butting up happily against shadowy brown and ochre-orange. None of her shapes – which follow a basic circle, square, triangle or rectangle form – overlap or dominate the other.