ARTIST EXCLUSIVE | On the occasion of his solo exhibition, The White Coat, Alex Katz sits down with Gray for brief Q & A. One of the most influential American artists of the last half-century and a leading figure of contemporary figurative painting, Katz discusses his latest series of eleven large-scale portraits and expands on his use of light, line and color.

Created between 2020 and 2021, Katz’s White Coat paintings are based on the likeness of Vivien Bittencourt, a photographer and filmmaker, and the artist’s daughter-in-law. Across these eleven portraits, Katz paints Vivien in a variety of dynamic compositions unified by a brilliant light blue ground color. With a discerning eye for color, form, and economy of line, Katz upholds the immediacy of portraiture while balancing the specific and abstract, intimate and remote, geometric and gestural.