​​​Barb Wauchope

Artist's Statement

​My love for wild places has taken me to deserts and forests, mountains and seacoasts around the world and my photographs or sketches of them are often my sources and inspiration. They help me develop an initial design, establish values, and assess a scene's potential as a stimulus to my imagination. In the studio I transform the images using oil or acrylic paint, most recently adding my actual photographs, paper mementos from travels, and dimensional relief forms that I create with clay. I alter or amplify colors; and abstract, exaggerate, or make forms more realistic. I add or invent new objects out of existing ones. I may include people or animals from my photographs or invent ones that didn't exist. Sometimes, in my desire to merge my sociological interests with my art, some of these works reflect my political or social concerns. Others are simply my efforts to capture the beauty and mystery of the world around us. The process helps me, and I hope will entice you, to linger and look harder at the landscapes around us, to see behind their complex and often confusing shapes and surfaces, and beyond the expected landscape subjects, colors, and  forms.