BARBARA MACFARLANE

Barbara Macfarlane studied at Exeter College of Art & Design. She graduated in 1980 and then spent several years travelling, mostly in India and always painting landscape. Outside she paints in ink and watercolour. In the studio she paints on a larger scale in oils.

Barbara’s works are better described as paintings from landscape rather than paintings of landscape. The place is important but it is perhaps not the true subject of her paintings which as she has said are “about shape, colour and balance”. She is well know for her abstract beach and south downs landscapes. Her subjects include Kingly Vale, Cobnor, East Head and the Witterings.

This description might give the impression that her work is introspective or at the very least self referential.  But the inspiration for the shapes and the colours is the landscape and in the sense that these paintings celebrate what is seen in the world they can certainly be described as landscapes.

Iceland was the starting off point for her recent series of paintings. Barbara visited the country in the summer of 2007, travelling to the Snaefellesnes peninsula in the north west and to  Myrdalsjokull and Skaftafell in the south and east.