Colour Distilled NEW PAINTINGS BY SHONA BARR
front cover image A Wider Sky oil on canvas 122cm x 122cm
Published by Kilmorack Gallery ltd, 2022 ISBN 978-1-8384862-8-0 Kilmorack Gallery, inverness-shire iv4 7al SCOTLAND art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk
Colour Distilled NEW PAINTINGS BY SHONA BARR
22 April - 14th May 2022
Tangled Trees oil on canvas 71cm x 71cm
Introduction
‘Less is more’ minimalists preach. It creates room for better things, they say. In a house it allows light and air in, and in music it is the pause between notes that makes a song. Shona Barr does this with paintings. Her gift is to take a landscape or the flowers on her allotment and abstract them to a point where a colourful vitality stands out: the vibrancy of a flower, the blue sandy-bottomed sea or a yellow-laced sky. Reality is condensed and distilled until it hums in a powerful energetic paintings. A few months ago, I waded through Shona Barr’s studio in Glasgow. There were large canvases stacked against the wall with a row of north-lit windows opposite them. Palettes with inch-deep paint, watercolours and sketch books were set up in works stations which fill every available space. Shona Barr has worked from here for thirty years and it is a place that reveals her ‘distillation’ process. She hands me a surprisingly conventional watercolour painting of flowers in a garden. ‘This’s from my allotment… dahlias. We go there and do our thing every weekend.’
Everything is in this painting – the darks, the brights and the woody stems. It is the garden full and unedited. Shona Barr then searches for the painting which follows on from this. It’s in a pile of work-in-progress. ‘I liked the colour of these two dahlias. See,’ she gestures with her hand ‘and the sweeping form of the leaves. Here’s the sketch taken from it.’ I look at the work handed to me. The remarkable thing is how its essence is more than just retained. It’s enhanced somehow. Barr has made the ordinary very special. ‘and if I like it, I’ll work it up into an oil painting.’ I have already seen the result in the large canvases laid out to view downstairs. The largest is over one-hundred-and-fifty centimetres square. They’re packed with energy and colour, and all of them retain the moment that first inspired the artist. There is a process: a walk, a drawing, a sketch; triple distilled.
Despite the brightness, these are subtle paintings. The colours are skilfully mixed and applied. Barr’s palette is her own and it’s taken thirty years of hard work to see and reproduce these hidden natural hues, and to make them dance together so well on the canvas. As I leave Shona Barr’s studio I notice tango posters pinned to her door. She is a tango dancer. My feet both face left and I don’t dance, but I have known tango from a distance. It is a dance of intelligent people, mostly urban, looking for a connection and their moment of duende when the dance floor stops. One intimate rotating moment caught and remembered. There are rules in Tango: not too close, not too far and look into the eyes. It is a controlled freedom. There are also rules in Shona Barr’s paintings. Colours hold each other, playing their part in the compositional movement. It is a play of closeness and distance, made in the spaces Barr has created through cleverly focusing on what is most important.
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There are thirty-seven paintings in this exhibition, all painted in two years of pandemic, and this has given Shona Barr more time than usual to prepare an exhibition. There is a feeling of freedom from back-to-back exhibitions and a relaxed movement… more time in the allotment, slower trips to the coast, more time at the beginning: feeling, sketching and absorbing this wonderful world. This show has come together at just the right time, and it is a great privilege to produce this catalogue. What better way to celebrate a new spring and a new year, than with colour, beauty and nature?
Tony Davidson Director of KilmorackGallery
Tentsmuir oil on canvas 61cm x 102cm
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Scintillating Sea oil on canvas 153cm x153cm
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Cornflowers and Calendula oil on canvas 71cm x 71cm
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Cosmos and Dahlias oil on canvas 71cm x 71cm
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Island Autumn oil on canvas 122cm x 122cm
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Azure Sea oil on canvas 122cm x 122cm
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Crocosmia Vortex oil on canvas 56cm x 102cm
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Vivid Crocosmias oil on canvas 56cm x 102cm
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Fragrant Sweetpeas oil on canvas 71cm x 92cm
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Dancing Dahlias oil on canvas 71cm x 92cm
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17
Mull sketch 4 mixed media on paper 35cm x 45cm
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Mull sketch 5
Mull sketch 1
mixed media on paper, 35cm x 45cm
mixed media on paper, 35cm x 45cm
Mull sketch 3
Mull sketch 2
mixed media on paper, 35cm x 45cm
mixed media on paper, 35cm x 45cm
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Glinting Light on the Loch oil on canvas 92cm x 92cm
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Ebb and Flow oil on canvas 92cm x 92cm
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Summer Colouirs oil on canvas 92cm x 92cm
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A Wider Sky study
Tangled Trees study
oil on card 20cm x 20cm
oil on card 20cm x 20cm
Opinan Beach study
Azure Sea study
oil on card 21cm x 21cm
oil on card 21cm x 21cm
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Cornflowers and Calendula study
Summer Colour study
oil on card 20cm x 20cm
oil on card 20cm x 20cm
Peas and Beans study
Dancing Dahlia study
oil on card 20cm x 20cm
oil on card 21cm x 21cm
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Opinan Beach oil on canvas 66cm x 92cm
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Peas and Beans oil on canvas 71cm x 92cm
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Peas and Beans study oil on card 21cm x 21cm
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Shona Barr (b 1965) is a Scottish artist whose work vibrates with energy. Barr’s loose, colourful brushwork and her deep-felt inspiration from the natural world make her one of the most exciting and evocative artists in Scotland. Shona Barr graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1988 where she still lives and works, often travelling and finding inspiration in the abundant natural world around her.
Distillation: the separation of substances mostly through careful evaporation, hopefully producing whisky. This catalogue celebrates an exhibition of Scottish artist Shona Barr and her powerful distillation of colour. £8.00