© 2020 by Needham Open Studios.

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Barbara Johansen Newman

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Location 

14

31 Thorpe Road

Gorse Mill Studios #102

781-727-0190

Medium:

Acrylic Paint, Collage, Mixed Media, Portrait

Regardless of the venue or medium, my goal over many years of making art has essentially been the same: to explore the essence of a portrait. For me, a portrait is one part of a far more complex story. Preoccupation with the passage of time also comes into play and I enjoy weaving relics of the past into the design, texture and color of my pieces by playing with surfaces and combining unlikely materials. I often use found objects, architectural salvage, furniture remnants, and other scraps derived from past uses and former lives. With these details, I seek to capture a fragment of a tale that is, or was, or has the promise to become. If I’ve done my job, the viewer will have enough visual clues to unravel the implied narrative. In short, I guess that makes me a storyteller with a hammer and a brush.