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Artist Profiles -
Volume 21
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Amherst 2B - Acrylic 40'' x 30''
Anne Barkley knows that the viewer's participation in her work is vital, and that the only way for art as communication to take place is when both artist and viewer allow the medium between them to act as a bridge. Anne's moments of creation, when ego lets go and intuition does its work, have been beautifully transferred to her canvases, so that when we take them in, her abstract forms still seem to be dancing in the drama of balance and tension, as they were in her moment of painting them. The smaller shapes are perfectly located to balance her more substantial geometric forms, and as our gaze moves across the canvas, foreground and background realign and shift. Our eye is drawn up and down the horizontal and vertical planes, and coupled with Anne's quietly powerful palette, our emotional responses shift accordingly. The artist has moved us, in the most fundamental sense of the word. These are paintings that reveal one artist's innate sense of how the human gaze, powered as it is by intellect and emotions, will help the artist fulfill the moment of creation. These are works that are being completed by us as we view them, and we can only be grateful to Anne, for leading us there.
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