Daniel Barber

My practice as an artist involves rigorous research into the nature of perception, an exploration of painting and drawing materials, deeply somatic memories of my daily immersions in the woods or sea, and self-investigation. While I am instinctively drawn to representations of the human figure, usually life-sized, in simple or elaborate environments, portraits, and, quite frequently, self-portraits, the larger fabric of being plays a roll as well – especially as a profound indicator of the complex and inseparable interweaving of all things in nature. I work predominantly from life, and the labored observation and complex process of representation from initial sketch to finished work is, itself, a crucial element of my art. Months spent scrutinizing myself in a mirror or gazing at another person as subject, results in an image that I hope resonates with the viewer as somehow familiar and acts as a catalyst for the viewer’s own introspection.

Painting and drawing are, for me, ways of thinking and inquiry and, coupled with my life-long interest in the sciences, philosophy, and poetry, act as curious tentacles ever probing existence. Painting, in particular, with luminous pigments suspended in oil resonates with me as an extension of my senses, of my body—a means to embody experience in a fixed form. It is a gradual act of layering, of creation and destruction (additive, subtractive; marking and erasing) that mimics the nature of life, filled as it is with observation and understanding. Painting, as life, is a kind of dance of the mind and senses through time, a dance in which we can all share as makers and viewers of art.