Barbara Marks “Isolation Journal and The Before Times”
The Painting Center
This event has ended.
The Painting Center presents two contrasting side-by-side exhibitions of recent work by Barbara Marks: Isolation Journal (13 February 2020–Present) and The Before Times (2019).
Everything is changed.
In The Before Times of 2019, Barbara participated in four month-long residencies making paintings and drawings in very different places: a lakeside town in Maine’s central highlands; the East End of Long Island; pastoral Upstate New York; and a sprawling industrial park in Barreiro, Portugal, across the bay from Lisbon.
For the past year, the island in her kitchen has been the center of Barbara’s universe. She’s been knitting, felting, weaving, writing, sewing, taking snapshots, and drawing rather obsessively in accordion-fold albums. Isolation Journal comprises 46+ volumes of drawings, documenting her time and the minutiae of daily life in COVID isolation, living alone, in coastal Connecticut.
Barbara Marks is known for her small, colorful, semi-abstract paintings, but drawing is her habit. She draws every day, any place, and everywhere. Her imagery is rooted in observation and it departs from it. “I like to call attention to the commonplace and the local. I look where others don’t. There’s the external world—and then there’s me. My paintings and drawings are the intersection of the two. In that respect, they are intimate and personal; perhaps they’re narrative.”
Barbara Marks received an MFA in painting from Brooklyn College, City University of New York and a BFA in painting from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Connecticut. Her work has been supported by residencies at Vermont Studio Center (VT), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VA), Fowler Dune Shack (Cape Cod), MIRA (Martignano, Italy), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), Jentel Foundation (WY), L.A. Summer Residency at Otis College of Art and Design (CA), The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences (GA), The Research Studio at Art & History Museums-Maitland (FL), Monson Arts (ME), Edward F. Albee Foundation (NY), Sam and Adele Golden Foundation (NY), Moulin à Nef (Auvillar, France), and PADA Studios (Barreiro, Portugal). She has twice been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Barbara’s work has been shown at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (MA); Providence Art Club (RI); Painting Center, First Street Gallery, Blue Mountain Gallery, and Atlantic Gallery (NYC); Ground Floor Gallery (Brooklyn), Drawing Rooms (NJ); New Britain Museum of American Art; DaSilva Gallery, Silvermine Arts Center, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, Whitney Center, Serendipity Gallery, The Loft Gallery, Five Points Gallery, and The Chase Family Gallery (CT); Thomas Deans Fine Art (Atlanta); McLanahan Gallery at Penn State Altoona (PA); The Affordable Art Fair (NYC); and Artist-Run at Satellite (Miami). Her work on paper is represented in the flatfile at Artspace New Haven. She is a Trustee of the Vermont Studio Center.
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Schedule
from March 31, 2021 to April 22, 2021