About
Whether walking the coastline or countryside, Barbara absorbs her surroundings obsessively, constantly exploring the relationships between land and sea: from craggy cliffs to soft velvet green rolling landscapes, rock next to soft earthy mounds, deep regular furrows on ploughed land, and sharp edges of cut peat bogs. Or spotting a flash of marine blue next to white chalky cliffs.
In the studio paintings are worked with strong intuitive marks, responding to what memory allows. Barbara uses a long established colour palette, painting only in oils with glazes that builds the canvas over several months. The composition evolves in a process of selection and elimination, until the final image presents itself.
Sometimes literature and poetry provide inspiration. Seamus Heaney's poetry is an inspiring voice in Barbara's work, his resonant words digging into her subconscious. Soaked fledge. Bog oak. Black butter.
Barbara has spent many years visiting the west coast of Ireland. More recent work reflects the Sussex Downs, her home for the past 23 years.
And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.
The Peninsula
Seamus Heaney. 1969
From 1976 to 1979 Barbara studied an Art Foundation Diploma in Buckinghamshire. Following that Barbara went on to travel and to raise a family, moving to Brighton in 1990.
In 1991 Barbara took a second Foundation at Brighton and then went to Brighton University where she gained a B.A. in Fine Art.
