Catherine Mulligan

Catherine Mulligan is a painter born in Nutley, New Jersey, and based in Brooklyn, New York.

Mulligan’s work is rooted in figurative representations of a decline in consumer culture. She treats the surfaces of her oil paintings with an artificial patina, as though the paintings themselves were resisting the hostile conditions of her imagined hellish landscapes. Most of her figures have jaundiced complexions, distended bellies, leathery, elastic skin, and visible ribs. Her paintings appear calcified, hardened by their encounter with the implicit lens of the camera. On the other side of the lens, the abject women maintain direct eye contact, neutralising any attempt at voyeurism with their glassy, distant gazes. Their postures are often artificial, uncomfortable, and insincere.

Mulligan has exhibited internationally, showing at Kunst im Tunnel (Düsseldorf), Hans Gallery (Chicago), Envy6011 (New Zealand), Tara Downs, Harkawik, Queer Thoughts, Clearing (NYC), and M+B (LA), and participated in the Bonner Kunstverein Jahresgaben in 2021. She is the recipient of two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grants and has been written about in Two Coats of Paint, Interview Magazine, ArtForum, and the Art in America newsletter, among others. Mulligan earned her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2009) and the University of Pennsylvania (2010), and holds an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington (2019).