Laura Barrett
Archetypes and Rock Stories
Exhibit Location: Lecture Hall Gallery
Meet the Artist: Saturday, February 8 | 2:00-3:00 pm
Workshop: Laura will hold a Masking and Resist Techniques for Watercolor workshop on March 8. Pre-registration for this free workshop is required.
Notes: Laura’s artwork is for sale. Please stop by the reference desk for more information.
About the Artist
A potter and painter in the Sierras for 40 years, Laura Barrett moved to Maine in 2020. She has a studio overlooking the Penobscot river and now works primarily in watermedia and fiber.
Visit Laura’s website or follow Laura on Instagram.
From the Artist
Several years ago I did a series of drawings of The Castle in Capitol Reef NP, southern Utah, revisiting via photographs an area where I had been on a wilderness survival course back in the 1970s. Fascinated by the shadow shapes, increasingly absorbed in the rock face, I started seeing people: strange archetypal figures emerged from the shadows as I continued drawing. Although the subsequent Castle painting didn’t turn out to be terribly exciting, the experience with the shadow people gave me a lot to think about.
In 2019 we visited a number of caves and cave replicas in France and Spain. What did prehistoric artists see in the cave walls? What did the rocks tell them? How long had they observed animals in daylight before they were ready to climb back into cave recesses and paint by the half-light of stone grease lamps? If I could someday achieve anything close to the grace of a Lascaux horse or Altamira bison I might actually feel I had become an artist.
Drawing is like a portal into another world, a looking glass to pass through. But then, so can walking around, looking at things in solitude be. What is the sound of oak, maple, birch sleeping in winter? What shapes do birds draw in the air as they fly? How does good crunching ice smell? What stories does a river tell you when you’ve walked a couple hundred miles on minimal food?
How real is this 3-dimensional world, that we perceive with only five senses, that moves its uniform blocks of time in one direction only? I don’t have any of the answers. These paintings are my attempt to articulate some questions.
