My fine arts education began with an attitude. The attitude came from my teachers, a small group of New York artists who had come of age in the 50s and 60s. The attitude was rooted in jazz. Painting was Hot. Painting was Cool. Push and pull and get your groove on. It was a neo-utopia, the resurrection of painting in an anything goes orgy of materials. Those were the days.

This spirit still visits me in the studio. My work has remained rooted in late modernist abstraction, and especially in the joy of experimentation with materials. Tape, mix, pour, splatter, scrape, stop, repeat. Colour is still hot. Colour is still cool. Shapes can dance. Shapes can speak. The politics of representation become sublimated in the language of paint, design, and craft.

~ Elizabeth Barnes

Elizabeth Barnes is an artist and educator and has lived and worked in Vancouver, BC since 2004. She received her BFA in 1991 from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and her MFA in 1993 from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She recently left a 12-year position in the faculty of Fine Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Her work has been exhibited in both public and commercial galleries throughout the United States and Canada.