Curator’s Choice: A Dual Exhibition with Carol Barber + William Bennett September 6-27, 2024 (Dové Gallery)
Second Street Gallery – Charlottesville, VA
As I continue to use paint as a medium, the digital art that I did early in my career still influences me. This manifests through experimentations with materials and layering of paint. My latest work involves painting directly on transparent substrates and suspending acrylic paint on top of clear acrylic gel. These methods present unique layering techniques all my own. September 6 – 27, 2024, I will be showing with the sculptor, William Bennet, in the Dové Gallery at Second Street Gallery. My new work will include paintings on clear Dura-lar film. The colors in the paintings represent memories of closely watching blown bubbles as a child. Paintings on wooden panels with colors representing carnival rides at night will also be in the exhibit. Looking forward to sharing “the carnival” paintings in the coming weeks!
“Blowing Bubbles”, acrylic on Dura-lar, 16″ x 16″, 2024.
This Fall feels like a reopening of the art world for me! It started with the annual fundraiser for Second Street Gallery on Sept. 2. Three of my small works sold quickly which made me happy! Not only to support the gallery but because I was debuting a new use of media in my paintings. This idea of painting on acrylic sheets is inspired by works I created digitally printing on acetate in graduate school more than twenty years ago!
Next on the calendar will be offering many works on paper that I started during the pandemic lock downs and have continued reworking. Sizes will range from 9" x 12" to 18" x 24" and the pieces will be affordably priced and not framed. This sale day will take place at Merrie Mill Farm & Vineyard, Friday, September 16, 2022 from 12 - 9pm.
On September 17, Dwell Fine Art & Craft will have a grand opening of their new gallery in Hume, VA! I am pleased to have large works on canvas included. I am sure you will enjoy a drive out to Hume, VA while taking in the Fall scenery. It is gorgeous country! Contact owner, Hayley Sykes, when you are planning your trip. 5047 Leeds Manor Road, Hume, VA 22639
The month will close with a fund raiser auction in which all proceeds will benefit Housing2Home, a collaborative program between New City Arts and The Haven. Get tickets here. Many artists are participating whose work I love. I am excited to debut another new piece of mine that is painted on two pieces of clear acrylic without any backing panel. I am very curious of peoples' reactions!
As you are seeing the Fall foliage, don't forget to stop in to the Annie Gould Gallery in Gordonsville, VA. It is filled with handmade treasures and you will spot some of my works on paper in frames. Happy Fall!
"Ascension I, II, and III" (one has sold) 2021, 11” x 14 ”, oil and graphite on paper, contact Annie Gould Gallery for availability
"Set Adrift" at Dwell Fine Art & Craft
"Summer Adventure" at Dwell Fine Art & Craft
"Rising One More Time" at Dwell Fine Art & Craft
"Echoing Impressions II", acrylic on acrylic sheet and wood panel, 8" x 8" SOLD
"Day Dream", 18" x 24", acrylic on acrylic sheets, New City Arts auction
Check out my new collection, "Touch of Earth", on Fine Art America. This work is from a new series where I am incorporating neutral colors into my palette while exploring line, shape and mark making. The many layers and delicate lines give each abstract piece a rich surface. Fine Art America offers prints in a variety of sizes and on many products. I think the weekender tote bag looks especially nice with my art. Please check it out!
On October 5th from 5:30 to 7:30 there will be an opening reception at Second Street Gallery and the featured artist is Lana Guerra from New Orleans. She will also be presenting a puppet show at 6:30.
My work will be in the "Backroom" which is really the office area, but I am still very excited to have a presence at this gallery. When I moved to Charlottesville seven years ago, I wanted to do art that was contemporary and could be shown at this gallery. Now after working these years to find my own voice in abstraction, my wish has come true. I am happy to be working in a manner that is abstract, intuitive and feels good to create.
When you go through the gallery you will see that Lana and I use some of the same bright colors such as fluorescent pink and teal but the over all feelings of the paintings are so different. Her art is like punk rock and mine is like jazz. I wonder if my art really is like jazz? I looked up Jazz on Wikipedia and maybe Lana's art is more like Jazz, both originated in New Orleans. I do not know much about music, but I thought Wikipedia would say that jazz was improvisational and playing with the elements of music. However, it didn't really say that, maybe I should ask a musician how they feel about it. I am in love with the art and design elements and I feel I do intuitively play with the elements to make finished compositions. Lana is working in an intuitive stream of consciousness, letting her creativity run wild. I hope to find out more about the narratives she creates on October 5th. She may have purposes and reasons for the stories or she may create them and the meanings emerge. I feel pretty sure the need to create is another common bond between the two of us and not just the same bright colors.
WATER. POISON. DRINK. DIVE. LANA GUERRA 9.7.2018 TO 10.20.2018
I had fun hanging pieces together that have never shown together before. Join me for a beer on Wednesday evening, June 6, from 5 to 8 pm to check it out in person. I would love to see you!
From the Organizer:
Random Row Brewery features Carol Barber for the month of June. On June 6th a reception for the artist will be held 5 - 8 pm. A great time to enjoy art and great beer. Location: 608 Preston A, Charlottesville, VA 22903 Hours: M-F 4:30 - 11, Sat-Sun noon- 9pm, (434) 284-8466
I was so happy with my studio time this year. Making new connections on Instagram and being involved with the Welcome Gallery in downtown Charlottesville, VA were also some highlights. So many things I want to accomplish in 2018: one is getting my art out into the world in an organized way, working on exciting compositions and bringing the magic of working on paper to canvas. I am also working on my teachers' certification. Hope all of your dreams come true in 2018!
Here are some closer pictures so that you can see these beach inspired paintings a little better. I love Golden acrylic mediums, they can alter the paint to be fluid, creamy, transparent or grainy. Perfect for capturing the feeling of the ocean.
With this painting I feel like I have finally found something that I have been desperately in search of for years. It was so unexpected, like turning over a rock by accident and finding a gemstone. I have been working and working and then boom everything came together; a meaningful idea, a satisfying methodology and successful visual painting elements. Also it seemed independent of my own desires and mood. I was feeling rather lousy about myself and just about everything and then this idea for a painting just came and worked. I plan to do a series of this idea and if that starts to happen, then I will explain the meaning more clearly. I don't want to jinx it all just yet. I do find comfort in that artistic success comes from consistent work and not from personal happiness or state of mind. I have rediscovered that drawing in a sketchbook is very important to my process. Not to get a blueprint for a painting, but to put shapes into my visual memory. So that when I am painting, I can just be free to paint and not feel I have to be tied to any reference. I also think I will have to have a new motivation to get work done, like a ritualistic schedule instead of a frenzied search. I observed in Korea that the way people did tasks had to be like worship for them. How else could you be at peace cleaning a sidewalk with tiny brushes or trimming shrubbery to immaculate perfection?
Check out my Fruit Roll-Up "glass" vessel on the food table. I hope if you are in the Melrose area that you can visit the gallery during the month of June. It will be open regular hours. Melrose Bay Art Gallery 103 SR-26, PO Box 36 - Melrose, FL 32666 ph. (352) 475-3866 or 871-5633 (cell) hours: Fri 3-7pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 1-5pm (call on weekdays)
The gallery looks so pretty right now. I was blown away by how some of Sarah and Sky's color combinations matched the colors of the paintings.
I am varnishing all of the paintings I have done over the last few months and I am starting to appreciate some of them more and more. I see that I have been in an expressive brush stroke phase. Doing more brushstrokes I believe is a result of attending the Skip Lawerence workshop. At the time I didn't know what if anything I was getting from that but I did grow and change. And brushstrokes were not his focus for the workshop. My earlier acrylic paintings were more like watercolors because I was using lots of fluid medium. I would like to do some paintings that combine the two more successfully. Lots of variation with thin washed areas, brush strokes with heavier paint and maybe even some collaged paper. With all of that, I have learned the shape and composition will need to be simpilier.
I had a painting accepted into the tenth annual International Society of Acrylic Painters exhibition to be held in the San Luis Obispo Art Center in California, May 5 through June 17. So it will be showing if I can follow the shipping instructions correctly. I wish I was going to the California coast with it, sounds fun. My husband says I am not as excited as I should be. For me I would feel more validated if it was one of the pieces I am working on now. I have gone back to finding a narrative during the painting process, I feel this is the way I want to work the most. The accepted piece was from last year when I was working on composition and not allowing myself to find images. But it is one of my favorite pieces from last year and I know it came from me and was a result of my previous work. So I fell good about the piece. What I am really excited about is that I get to send a brochure for the gallery's binder. So on that I can put other work and my blog site and hopefully get some feed back. I have been rejected from the juried show at the Thomas Center Gallery here in town lots of times so this is much better than that. The first year I entered there, I had all three pieces accepted but zero since then. Those first three were single figures with layering not narratives. So I worry that my narrative work is not serious-looking enough to be accepted into juried shows. But I don't want to comform just keep following my path.
Here is a new painting in progress. I want to change the red face in the lower right. In the painting,the figures are hovering around a baby chick, I'm sure this idea is coming from my son's kindergarten class. They had an incubator and hatched chicks last week. I notice my new pieces all have birds in them and I was thinking of all of the ways birds are symbols. Personally, I think of birds symbolizing freedom because they fly, joy because they provide constant background music to my days (I hear them right now out of the window), and love because of the tender way we need to hold them on our rare opportunity.
I am so excited to have lots of new images to post. First I have the two sketches with my son's art materials that pointed me in a new direction for my paintings. It is a way of working with varied lines and shapes and thick and thin color applications until a form emerges. I attempted some of the methods from them in a large painting of a bird, I entitled "Looking for Home". The narrative developed during the process which is fun. I like the painting but think maybe I should have attempted a smaller one first, this is about 3.5 feet tall. I am pleased with it though. I am also posting a plein air painting I did during the Paint Out my cooperative gallery is hosting. This is not my usual genre but I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out. All in all, getting out of my comfort zone and trying some new things was stimulating and hopefully beneficial to my work.
I like the layering of these two new paintings and they look more mature or artsy. I think if they were anyone else's I would think they were cool. I personally would like the subject matter to be more feminine. These are of male face's probably because I have been drawing and doing studies of my sons' faces. When I start working without any preconceived ideas it is amazing how things I have drawn, read or thought appear. I guess I should draw some things that I want to paint later. I have a list of meaningful symbols that I would like to appear in my work. I started with one of them, a ladder, in a "Boy's Life". I also want the composition to be non-linear and dream-like as in the center of "A Boy's Life". I like how the face in "Listening to Living Music" is dimensional, expressive and layered. I wish I could love the entire paintings as much as I love one part. I'll keep going believing it is all going to come together.
I have been painting like crazy. March seems to always be a productive time for me and when I produce my favorite paintings of the year. This painting was what I call lost then found. I work, make a mess, do some layering and marks and then the subject matter materializes towards the end of the process then I clean and decorate for the final results. It seems like a weird way to work and I don't know how I am going to get a series in any timely fashion but I find this way of working most satisfying. I call this painting "She was a Farmer".
www.carolbarber.com
Painting for the love of color, the joyous process of layering paint and the inspiration of the wonderful world around us. I have been an exhibiting artist since 2002.
