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"Wordplay: gameboard with flags" by Chris Barnes
20 x 20 inches
Acrylic paint, ink, pencil on canvas
$800
Artist Statement:
Sometimes, a painting feels to me like an artifact from an imagined future past, like a worn game board whose purpose is no longer known. This richly detailed work evolved over more than 12 months with drips, scrapes, shapes, and texture, plus many hundreds of words — most now hidden or unreadable. It feels cheery to me, and curiously inexplicable at the same time.
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, impulsive, and deliberately unpolished. 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. Chris exhibited recently in a group show at the Washington Center Gallery in Olympia.
*This piece is currently on display at the First Stop Art Exhibition until June 13th. Pickup and shipping of purchased artwork will be arranged by the artist at the close of the show.
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