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"Falling" by Chris Barnes
20 x 16 inches
mixed media on canvas
$400
Artist Statement:
In Falling, I continue to explore themes of chaos and human messiness. Up close, individual elements appear sloppy and hastily rendered. Yet stepping back, there’s an emergent loveliness in the cheerful swirl and fall of multi-colored paper scraps. Stream of consciousness writing frames the work, which paraphrased, reads: "Feels like chaos when everything all the time surrounds and envelops and sparks and aligns and rearranges the anxious rumors of evolving concern and I so seek peace and quiet in the changes." I’m amused that the composition gives an unintended nod to Chutes and Ladders and delighted that I don’t think AI would make these choices.
About the Artist:
Chris Barnes is an Olympia-based visual designer, consultant, and artist. In contrast to his professional work, his studio practice is intuitive and improvisatory. He spent twenty years experimenting with ceramics: investigating collapsed forms, thin and sharp edges, carved surfaces, and intricate glazing. In 2020, he shifted his focus to painting, working with acrylic paint, pencil, ink, and collage on canvas, paper, and wood panel. Inspired by the complexity of nature, urban environments, and human emotion, Chris builds paintings through many overlapping layers — playing gloss against matte, opacity against transparency — to create rich, emergent surfaces. While his paintings vary in style, hallmarks include bold color, gestural marks, simple shapes, silly faces, and graffiti-like writing that stand out at first glance, while the complex interplay of layers and rhythm reveals itself to patient viewers.
