Caitlin MacBride (b. 1983, Norwich, CT) engages with material culture and artifacts in an exploration of labor, desire, and history. MacBride’s oil paintings balance various languages of painting history with the structures of utilitarian objects sourced from museum archives. These paintings depict objects, specifically tools, furniture, and clothing from Early-American histories as a way of examining the influence of necessity and dogma on object-making. The connections between materiality, motivation, and cultural narratives emerge as MacBride explores the tension between form and function. A variety of painting approaches are employed to combine the language of modernism with craft and design practices. The role of institutional acquisition, documentation, and display inform the composition. The process of painting is influenced by a relationship to a puritan work ethic and the concept that labor might innately be tied to salvation. Feminist and working-class traditions of making are harnessed to examine structural memory and cultural beliefs about worth. And she just recently had a solo exhibition with the Shaker Museum, From Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor, in Kinderhook, NY in 2024.

EXHIBITIONS WITH DEP:

*Upcoming solo exhibition in 2026
NADA MIAMI, solo presentation, 2024
A Cup is a Cup, a Tree is a Tree, 2024
Caitlin MacBride: Dyeing Notes, 2022