Barbara Shafer
Barbara Shafer, of Eau Claire, is a figurative painter and a painter of large, organic, sculptural plant paintings who emphasizes her involvement of modern dance in large, gestural compositions featuring her friends and visiting performers. Shafer received her BFA in "Sculpture", from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Painting from the University of Cincinnati. It was in Cincinnati that her infatuation with paint and her interest in lines and color melded with her love of three-dimensional forms.
Artist Statement
Growing up near the Hudson River, just north of New York City, I was strongly drawn to its cliffs and the outcroppings of nearby rock. I began my art career as a sculptor wanting to express the resonance of these internal forces and formations and their organic surfaces in my work.
When my infatuation with paint as a medium solidified, my interests expanded to include line, color and the application of paint. What ever medium I use (acrylic, watercolor, charcoal, pen and ink) my work reflects my early training in sculpture and love of clay and drawing. I continue to build layer upon layer upon layer, cutting shapes into large forms as I once had with a paring knife, only now with charcoal pencil and a brush.
Because of my sculptural interest, in many of my pieces the negative space surrounding each form remains more open, isolating the positive object as it would be in a three dimensional work. I often maintain the charcoal line and thin out my paint as tools to search for representation of form and compositional relationships, proportions, the edge, and the emotional character of the object. I de-saturate almost all of my colors, adding intense hues in small proportions to punctuate an edge or to create space.
The human face and body provide much of the subject for my work. (I study and teach modern dance) In some the figure’s mood is introspective and I get “caught up” in depicting that suspended moment, in others; precedence is given to the movement and relationship of figures to one another or to the space of the canvas. I view these paintings as both portraits and the body as landscapes. I like to photograph performances and meld multiple images of the dancer to recreate on a two dimensional surface the movement and energy of the original.
My “Plant Forms” paintings are the result of a growing interest in the freedom and potential for expressive drawing, made possible by getting away from the human figure. Dried plants have inspire this aspect of my work since bouquet given to me by my husband was permitted to dry. Interestingly these paintings contain more gesture and perhaps relate more to the dance then my earlier works. They are more expressive painterly, and abstract.
My landscape work reflects mostly the drawing/painting I have done each summer, during my husband and my vacations on the north shore of Lake Superior. We spend a week working there and in Jay Cook State Park, Minnesota. These work, although formally considered water colors, give way to my underlining passion to draw and bring me back in a full circle to the rock formations of my childhood.
I see my daily struggles in the context of those historically faced by all artists.
Some people of note who have specifically influenced me include: Eakins, Lembruck, Goya, Freud, Manzu, Giacometti, Bruegel, Etruscan and certain medieval sculptures and the Abstract Expressionists.
My BFA was from the Rhode Island School of Design, MFA from the University of Cincinnati. I have taught in adjunct positions in the Departments of Art at both the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of Wisconsin Stout.
I have had numerous One Person shows throughout Wisconsin including: The Pump House, LaCrosse, The Phipps, Hudson, New Visions Gallery, Marshfield, The Visual Arts Center, Wausau, The Heyde Center, Chippewa Falls and The L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and The Eau Claire Regional Arts Center, Eau Claire. My work can be seen in numerous public and private collections throughout the country.