Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 4

Vera Barnett
Rose Colored Glasses

2009

About the Item

Inspired by the painting "The Blind Leading the Blind" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Vera Barnett is best known for creating elements of her composition—by sewing and painting plastic, building objects with cardboard and tape, and assembling found objects—then setting them up in her studio to paint as a still life. Barnett paints her still life arrangements in a trompe l’oeil manner so real as to confound the viewer. Barnett says, “I am drawn to art that explores the emotional relationships between people, their environment and circumstances that they find themselves in. I wish to reconstruct these ideas through my own vision, my life and experiences.” Vera Barnett has taken on a range of themes in her works, producing series of paintings inspired by phobias, famous artworks (as in her series "Classical Plastique,") or most recently the written word in her exhibition, “The Painted Word.” Barnett’s paintings, at once both still life and figurative, are first composed as hand-made maquettes in her studio. Once the scene is created – using sewn plastic and cloth, cardboard, tape, and found objects – Barnett paints her tableaus in astonishing trompe l’oeil. The figures’ fabricated textures are rendered so convincingly, yet their presence and humanity are fully authentic. In his essay, “The Fabrications of Vera Barnett: An Appreciation,” Frederick Turner writes of Barnett’s subjects: “To begin with, they have been painted with such loving classical attention that their cheap materials and tight or flaccid artificiality take on a kind of pathos, are ennobled by the attention they have been given.” Turner continues, “And here we come to what I believe is Barnett’s breathtaking – or rather breathgiving – reply to all the modernist and postmodernist critics of reproduction. Her paintings are not just reproductions, but reproductions of reproductions of reproductions, like humans and animals and plants, or like the repeats in wallpaper or cloth print patterns she uses as backdrops (themselves minutely and lovingly recorded). “ Barnett studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Bibliography: “Vera Barnett: Classical Plastique,” exhibition catalogue, with the essay “The Fabrications of Vera Barnett: an Appreciation” by Frederick Turner, Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 2010.
  • Creator:
    Vera Barnett (1957, American)
  • Creation Year:
    2009
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 35.75 in (90.81 cm)Width: 48 in (121.92 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Dallas, TX
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: 156021stDibs: LU2571792693
More From This SellerView All
  • In/Out
    By Vera Barnett
    Located in Dallas, TX
    This painting was inspired by the Virginia Woolf quote: "I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in." In her serie...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil

  • The Painted Word: Wander
    By Vera Barnett
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Inspired by the J. R. R. Tolkien quote "Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" from the poem "All That is Gold Does Not Glitter" from "The Lord of the Rings." The poem reads: "All th...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil

  • Time
    By Vera Barnett
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Inspired by the quote "Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations." - Faith Baldwin In her recent series, "The Painted Word," Vera Barnett has turned to the written word for...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil

  • Ship of Fools
    By Vera Barnett
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Linen

  • Don't Hurt Me
    By Valton Tyler
    Located in Dallas, TX
    In The New York Times Arts in America column, Edward M. Gomez writes of Valton Tyler, "visionary seems the right word for describing his vivid, unusual and technically refined painti...
    Category

    1970s Surrealist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil

  • Girl in Green
    By Donald S. Vogel
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Donald Vogel’s paintings reflect his interest in seeking beauty in life and in sharing pleasure with his viewers. Vogel entreats us to "rejoice and celebrate each new day, knowing it...
    Category

    1940s American Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil

You May Also Like
  • Attention Economy
    Located in Denver, CO
    In Lion in the Kitchen, his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Benn reflected on the textures and potential narratives of domestic space. After spending a season indoors with h...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil Pastel, Dye, Oil

  • Shadows & Light Paris IV
    By Eline de Jonge
    Located in AMSTERDAM, NH
    Oil painting on Belgian linen canvas. Very layered with subtle colours showing the sunlight. It depicts the cast shadow of the Eiffel Tower on a sunny day and the people walking in t...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Linen, Canvas

  • Jump
    By Philip Buller
    Located in San Diego, CA
    30 x 100 oil on linen over panel. Framed dimensions are 32H x 102W
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil, Wood Panel

  • Personnage de fiction No.5
    Located in PARIS, FR
    Circular oil and acrylic painting by artist Wenyu Zhu. This work shows a unique fictional scenery, in which a jellyfish, a frog and a fish are staying together. Although they won’t b...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Linen, Oil, Acrylic, Canvas

  • Traver l’océan No.1
    Located in PARIS, FR
    Circular oil and acrylic painting by artist Wenyu Zhu. This work shows us a dramatic adventure of a butterfly. Butterfly seems like a vulnerable and fragile creature, but in this wor...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Linen, Oil, Acrylic

  • Traver l’océan
    Located in PARIS, FR
    Circular oil and acrylic painting by artist Wenyu Zhu. This work shows a thrilling scenery, in which a fish is trying to travel across the dangerous sea waves. The artisit uses many ...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Acrylic, Canvas, Linen, Oil

Recently Viewed

View All