"Johnston Canyon, Alberta Canada," by Ross Barbera, Acrylic on Canvas, 48" x 32", 2018
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The painting featured on this page is my most recent piece and is from my new series dedicated to mountain streams and glaciers. It shows a view of that I photographed while hiking along Johnston Canyon in Alberta Canada. The painting is acrylic on canvas, and measures 48" x 32". Until this most recent series of paintings, my work focused on the natural sunlight world of the Northeast landscape. Paintings range from extreme close-ups of pond surfaces, trees, forest floors, leaves and flowers, to more encompassing views. Created an acrylic on canvas and watercolor on paper, they explore the visual interaction occurring between streams, ponds and bodies of water with the surrounding landscape environments. Inspired by the interplay and rich diversity of textural surfaces, form and colors within these natural places, especially on water services, my paintings capture close-up views of intimate forest settings. Sometimes tiny worlds of subtle harmonies and rhythms are revealed where the recognizable becomes abstract. Abstraction discovered in the microcosmic is the primary motivation for my flower paintings which are a more recent development and enable be to experiment freely with composition, form, and the painting's physical structure. In addition to painting, I create jewelry using nontraditional materials. My jewelry can also be seen in this website. A brief summary of my career as an artist includes group, juried and solo exhibitions of my paintings almost every year since 1975, prestigious grants including a National Endowment for the Arts in painting, and currently I am a tenured faculty member teaching at St. John’s University, in the Department of Art and Design, where I served as chair for three years. |