Pat Barnes is an award winning professional artist with thirty years’ experience in watercolor, printmaking, oils and acrylics.  Her works may be found in many states across the U.S. and in Europe.  She is a signature member of the Baltimore Watercolor Society.  She enjoys teaching adults and children to discover their own paths when approaching the visual arts.  Having lived most of her adult life in Maryland, she presently resides in “Wild, wonderful West Virginia”, and enjoys traveling and painting in new locations such as Main, New Mexico and Italy.

Pat Barnes

With a degree in music and years of study of the visual arts, my personal language has developed with an awareness of the similarity of these two forms and a curiosity about how they both relate to me.  I am fascinated with the complexity of nature’s performance.  As in a Bach fugue, what seems tangled becomes a richly-woven tapestry, superbly organized and elegant. 

Painting often becomes a meditation for me, an essential activity full of quiet passion and sumptuous color.  A central pursuit is a search for the balance of rhythm, color, line, shape and texture; in other words, the organization of the visual fugue. 

I sometimes hear music when looking at a painting.  I usually paint alone and in silence in order to listen to the stillness which is the prelude to the music of the work.  Many of the images help me to explore my connection with the natural and spiritual world.

“Three Graces” is the fruit of a five-year odyssey, which uses figures as symbols of protection, peace and joy.  It is an exploration of things unseen.  Others have found their own personal images in this painting which have meaning for them.

“To The Sun!” is about the ability of a seed to crack a boulder in order to grow; yet the most delicate of blooms is given in celebration.  I find this contrast of power and fragility incredible, and compare it to a transition from a minor key to a major key in music.

“Moonsong” is a painting that depicts a night scene evoking the faraway sounds of rushing water, night insects and birds, the creaking of trees and the rustle of leaves in the wind, a statement about the magic of the world at night.

The painting “Morning Has Broken” has a title borrowed from a favorite song.  The painting and the song evoke the freshness of a clear day and the promise of new possibilities.

It is always enlightening to hear the viewer’s interpretation of my paintings.  The song “heard” by them sometimes has nuances which enhance my own understanding.