1708 Gallery Presents Painting (in part, and in pieces) by Barbara Campbell Thomas

January 8, 2010: Artist Talk and Opening Reception, 6:45-10pm
February 5, 2010: First Friday Reception, 7-10pm 

February 13, 2010: Artist Talk, 1pm

Painting (in part, and in pieces) by Barbara Campbell Thomas will debut at 1708 Gallery on Friday, January 8 and continue through Saturday, February 13. 

1708 Gallery will host an opening reception and artist talk by Barbara Campbell Thomas on Friday, January 8 from 6:45 to 10 p.m. Campbell Thomas will begin her talk at 7 p.m. The artist will give an additional talk on Saturday, February 13 at 1 p.m.; the talk is free and open to the public.  

Painting (in part, and in pieces) comprises large pieced together paintings on paper, small highly layered paintings on canvas and a series of mid-sized collages made in tandem. All the work employs an intensely colorful and fragmentary abstract language of shape, line and texture.  

Campbell Thomas’s large-scale works hover between the media of painting, drawing and collage. With this blurring of lines, Campbell Thomas questions and challenges the aesthetic boundary and typical definition of painting through her melding of media.  

Beyond fostering an investigation into the definition of painting, Campbell Thomas explores the intentional visual and material disjunction of her media to reveal an interest in the fragmented physical and psychic condition of contemporary life. Through this exploration Campbell Thomas asks, “What does it mean to make a painting now – in this space and time?”  

With works reveling in high-keyed colors and juxtaposition of shape and pattern, Campbell Thomas’s paintings provide the means of inventing and locating an ecstatic, exuberant, ever-unfolding space that acts as a counterpart to our frenetic existence. The paintings act as a counterpart to the hurried pace of our culture and relentless press of information.  

In addition to the formal manipulation of her works, Campbell Thomas constructs her images by delving into the literal construct of painting – shattering the medium’s typically unblemished expanse. She breaks through the boundaries of painting by building paintings out of pinned together pieces of painted paper, utilizing the occasional bit of fabric and using the white gallery wall as an integral part to the overall whole piece. 

Campbell Thomas’s work has been exhibited nationally in venues such as the Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is a member of the Charlottesville, Virginia-based artists’ collective The Printmaker’s Left. Her work can be found in their most recent publication, The Land of Wandering, Volume One of the Exquisite History.