Featured Artist
BARBARA FLEXNER
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Barbara was born on Staten Island, New York. During her formative years her family lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is a graduate of the New School for Social Research in New York with a degree in Fine Arts and Social Sciences.
Barbara began to draw and paint as a young child. Art has been a life long passion. As an adult she has studied drawing, painting, textile surface design, printmaking, weaving, natural dyeing and spinning at a number of universities and craft centers nationwide.
Barbara studied Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. After working as a corporate architect for many years, the artist switched careers and worked as the Village Weaver at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, New Jersey. There she was able to direct a staff that designed and produced domestic textiles for use in the Village and for sale to the public. The weavers at Waterloo Village tended sheep, hand produced yarns, grew their own dyestuffs and wove finished product on handlooms.
About Barbara...
Barbara is a versatile painter who mostly works from mental images. The use of color in layers and complex compositions gives life to her work. Her paintings are exuberant in their use of bright color and saturated tone. She applies paint with large brushes and flexible palette knives. This is reflected in the looseness of detail and delicacy of line.
Many of the subjects are imaginary sites, painted from compound memories. They are meant to evoke a familiarity of place while at the same time providing the viewer with the sensation of having passed through what is being viewed.
Barbara has held several board positions at DFAA over a number of years. She has also served on the Sights & Insights Exhibition committee multiple times and we thank her for her invaluable contribution in that endeavor. We want to thank her for all the time and energy she has dedicated to our organization!