Barbara Schreiber
North Carolina
Artist Statement Submitted 2016
My paintings and drawings combine pretty pictures and ugly subjects. I sometimes see them as dispatches from the borderland between happy denial and grim reality.Lately, I’ve become aware of how my work tells a distinctly American story—one of restlessness, one of real estate, bracketed by the open road and the gated community.
Most of my recent paintings are in the purest sense landscapes, since they are filled with deserts, mountains, fields and subdivisions. But they are really about the collision of the built and natural worlds, about battles in which outcomes are uncertain. They variously address threats presented by development, natural and human-made disaster, greed or obliviousness. Despite their often dire subject matter, they are, at heart, humorous.
