Artist Statement

              I create contemporary abstract paintings in acrylic and oil and conceptual pastel renderings of anything that catches my fancy and inspires me to breathe life onto a canvas or pastel board.
 
             With abstract painting, it doesn’t matter how many ways a piece of art can be “read”.  Painting is above all an emotional language that goes beyond what is seen.  It’s a precarious balancing act.  Sometimes a portrait becomes a landscape and then an abstraction; a balance between deconstruction and reconstruction often times taking shape only in chaos.
 
               While abstracts develop through spontaneous gesture, layers of color and charcoal lines, my atmospheric landscapes incorporate blurred effects and glaze transparencies.  These “vaguely” represent somewhere, someplace - oftentimes depicting glimpses of childhood memories of Lake Michigan and growing up in Chicago, and memories of the St. Lawrence seaway and Finger Lakes.
                                                                                    - Rita Barone