Copyright © Barbara Braun Artist, All rights reserved.
Please join us in celebration of the opening for Reflections in Oil: Paintings by Barbara Braun, class of 66′ NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts
Opening reception Friday, October 5th, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
on view through January 27th, 2019
NYU Kimmel Galleries
60 Washington Square South, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Gallery hours M-S: 8am to 11pm; Sun: 12pm-10pm
REFLECTIONS IN OIL offers a selection of 25 abstract oil on canvas paintings and one charcoal drawing created by Barbara Braun over the last five years.
Braun’s work is abstract, with figural references in the Expressionist vein. She conveys her emotional response to the natural and objective worlds and to current events here and abroad.
She comments: “I have looked closely at the work of modern artists I have studied and loved, including Arthur Dove (I wrote an MA thesis on him at the IFA/NYU), Kandinsky and the German Expressionists. Perhaps above all, I hold the work of Philip Guston as a model for creating a deeply personal style of abstract figuration that speaks to the head and the heart. Among contemporary painters I would single out the work of Amy Sillman as someone I keenly admire. My basic inclination is towards expressionist abstraction, incorporating references to figures and the objective, including the natural and social worlds we live in.”
Many of her oils evoking the natural world, including Evening Flowers, Night Gardens, Horses, Sunny Square, Sweeping Forms, Temptation, Electric Energy, All Together, Strange Things, show her visceral responses to visual sensations. There is often a hint of strangeness, of intruding unnatural forms and energies lurking behind these visible elements, and acting upon them.
Braun’s attention is never far from disturbing current events in the world. In a recent series of abstractions she focuses on the suffering of Syrian refugees as they seek survival in a new life, (Syria 2, Sea Rescue, Boat People, Comfort Zone), on turmoil in Palestine (Gaza 1 and Gaza 2, Uprising), on confrontations between African American men and the police (Ritual Dance), on the mistreatment of Central American immigrants seeking asylum in the US (Long Wait, Moving Hand).
Braun lives in New York City and Saugerties, NY. She holds degrees from Cornell, NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and Columbia, and has been involved with art all her life as a critic, curator, and author, but only took up painting in a serious way about eight years ago. Since then she has taken a number of classes and workshops at the Woodstock School of Art, near her country home, and has had several shows there and at the museum of the Woodstock Artist Association. This show marks her New York debut.
Visit www.BarbaraBraunArtist.com to learn more about the artist and contact her.
