Josie Barnes

Venue – UPDATE – The Methodist Church
Cost – Free
Time – All Weekend

Josie Barnes on her work; www.josiesgallery.co.uk

My paintings can be spontaneous with the raw colour put on quickly using knives, brushes, fingers….. Or they may be more thoughtful, use geometric figures and borrow from stain glass window design. Frequently I work on both types together, the freedom of one enabling the more conscious, studied approach of the second

Whether it is the patterns, details and colours of a bird’s plumage or the much wider view of the changes of season in the local landscape the aim is to create beautiful, colourful, attractive and occasionally unusual paintings to portray and draw attention to what I have seen.

Josie Barnes CV

Born in South Carolina, USA in 1961, I was brought up from the age of two in Oakford, a small farming village on the edge of Exmoor, where I went to the tiny village school. I studied Art to A-Level at Tiverton School, but pursued a career founded on a Maths based degree at Warwick University.

I spent fifteen years in Cambridge where I met my lovely husband John who I persuaded to move back with me to Devon in 2000.

My love of painting resurfaced during a career break when I enrolled with the Open College of Arts to see what else I could do. My very first painting Welsh Valleys was highly commended at an exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in London and with this sort of encouragement I have been painting ever since.

Now my paintings are inspired by the rural, natural beauty of North Devon where I live near Kings Nympton. They vary in style and are created in oil with the paint applied in differing ways dependent on the mood. Some are spontaneous and the paint is put on quickly using knives, brushes, sponges, fingers, anything really. Others are more thoughtful, using geometric figures and borrowing from stain glass window design. Frequently I work on both kinds of paintings concurrently, the freedom of one enabling the more conscious, studied approach of the second.

Whether it is the patterns, details and colours of a bird’s plumage or the much wider view of the changes of season in the local landscape the aim is to create beautiful, attractive and occasionally unusual paintings to portray and draw attention to what I see every day.

Exhibitions
Bankside Gallery London
The Place Gallery, Letchworth
Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge
Off the Wall Gallery, Topsham
North Devon Art Show 2003
Queens Theatre Barnstaple
Gallery 39 Barnstaple
www.josiesgallery.co.uk