71st Annual Juried Exhibition: Barbara Schaff

The Pink Dress

As a child, I grew up admiring images of Goya, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Chinese calligraphy. The then new abstractions of Franz Klein, DeKooning, and Jackson Pollock resonated with me as a teenager.

Since the beginning of my creative career in the Early 70’s, I have been following one basic thread of an idea: the search for moving line.  

Forty years ago, I began this search as a self taught potter: first finding that line in three dimensions with the raising of a spinning mass on the potters wheel. Later as I worked with porcelain on two dimensional murals with color and brush , the avenues for line exploration multiplied (Tao).
 

I transitioned to painting ,earning a Certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1994. There, under the mentorship of Seymour Remenick, I learned to work intuitively, trusting in the gesture, the color and the line to discover the unknown. I also received a firm grounding in the singular importance of drawing. 

After graduation I was given the opportunity to study calligraphy and ink painting at the China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. The total immersion in Chinese culture exploded any preconceptions I had about what the future of my work would be. But my desire to follow that expressive line, wherever it led, became a passion (The Pink Dress).

Tao, glaze on porcelain tile

Among the Grasses

Happy Birthday

Since then the work has gone through many incarnations (Among the Grasses, 2006 and Happy Birthday,  2009). However, my focus has remained constant. In wrestling with the line itself, I hope to dig beneath the surface of things to discover the simplicity of what connects us to our world and to each other.

Currently, I am preparing for a solo show at the Phillip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College on view September 2012-April 2013.By Barbara Schaff

Barbara's work is featured in Woodmere Art Museum's  71st Annual Juried Exhibition.

About Woodmere's 71st Annual Juried Exhibition: 

Woodmere's 71st Annual Juried Exhibition, juried by artist Alex Kanevsky, will feature works in a variety of media from 46 artists living within 50 miles of the Museum. Works were chosen to create a cohesive presentation that explores contemporary ideas within the arts of Philadelphia. In conjunction with the juried show, Kanevsky's own work will be on view in the exhibition Alex Kanevsky: Some Paintings and Drawings, and the artist has also selected some of Woodmere's works of art for display in Selections from the Collection.