PAST EXHIBITION

Joan Barber: Skin

September 11, 2008—October 18, 2008

What typifies Joan Barber's art in these works she titled SKIN is a saucy, edgy, tongue-in-cheek wink at the viewer.  She is a voyeur-painter of people's memories and interior narratives.  She paints quickly, keeping the brush moving over everything to sustain her access to these inner worlds.  She wants to prevent subconscious motives from escaping, from dilution by premature reflection.  In her paintings she captures the tension, bliss, confusion, sexual plots, plans, disorders, sorrow, whispers, naked resilience, passion, impudence and restlessness that smolders beneath us all.  Her art suggests our impatience for ecstasy.  She says,"I take it all as mine because it is no different than my own." 
Barber lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  She was educated at the Museum Art School, Portland, Oregon from 1959-63.  She has had two major commissions for The Carnival Cruise Lines.  The first was nine huge murals that adorned the central staircase landings of the 2974-passenger superliner "Freedom," that debuted March 5, 2007.  Barber's murals were so successful, she was asked to create ten murals again for the aft stairwell of the 2008 Splendor ship, the largest fun-ship ever constructed.  Whereas the earlier murals portrayed recreational aspects of the 1940s post-war American culture and reflected optimism and hope for the future of that era, the works for the Splendor released in Barber a looser quality and a sense of abandonment. That feeling is carried over into her ten most recent paintings on view at the Flomenhaft Gallery.

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