by Barbara Downs | Mar 11, 2015
Another Iceland drawing (see this post for the first two). This one, though done with drawing materials, feels like a painting to me. As is usually the case, the scale of these drawings seems important to me, so here is the obligatory studio shot with my yellow...
by Barbara Downs | Jan 11, 2015
I don’t normally engage in magical thinking, but I do believe in the power of art. I needed a talisman, for personal reasons, so I edited my two recent large landscape drawings to add doors to the buildings. I felt that I need an entrance to that stark world....
by Barbara Downs | Dec 3, 2014
I get asked all the time how I go about starting a painting. Do I work from a drawing that I then copy onto the canvas? Directly from a model? Or from photos? Do I sketch first on the canvas? With charcoal? Pencil? Paint? Truth be told, I don’t have a single...
by Barbara Downs | Jul 22, 2014
I’m still in Iceland, trying to dissect the landscape by considering just small portions of it at a time: the colors and shapes of the pebbles on which I’m walking, the yellow dandelions growing amidst the black volcanic rock. The landscape as a whole...