Artist Update: Barbara Marks
News and new work from Barbara Marks!
April 2019—A recap of my winter . . . I had paintings in three terrific shows—“Ear to the Ground,” curated by the stellar Julie Torres at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven; and, in NYC, at The Painting Center’s 25th Anniversary Invitational Exhibition, and the Atlantic Gallery’s juried show, “Escape/ism.” Instead of heading south to dodge the winter, I chose to go north to the central highlands of Maine, and the town of Monson, on the shore of frozen Lake Hebron, where I spent the month of February as an artist-in-residence at Monson Arts. It was a very cold, very snowy, very productive, very wonderful month. I completed a set of eight paintings, three of which were curated into an invitational exhibition, “A Web of Artists: Friends from Social Networks,” at Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia.
On New Year's day, in a departure from drawing in accordion-fold albums, I began to make drawings on the inside of collapsed, disassembled packaging—formerly containing such ordinary items as bar soap, chocolate, tissues, crackers, Advil, and so on—upcycling something meant to be disposed of, by reëmploying it as the substrate for a drawing. The inaugural ten drawings in the series were curated into “Inside Out,” at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT.
Looking ahead, I'm thrilled about two upcoming residencies. I'll begin this summer by spending the month of June living and working in The Barn at the Edward L. Albee Foundation, in Montauk, Long Island ... and I'll end the summer with a monthlong residency totally devoted to paint and painting at the Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY. I am grateful for these exceptional opportunities.