Kathy Barber: Reading Between the Lines

Kathy is a self-taught abstract painter working in oils, mainly on Belgian linen. She’s been a full-time painter for the past decade, following many years of working as a graphic designer and art director.

The work in ‘Reading Between the Lines’ is a departure from the serene and minimal paintings she has become known for, although it remains anchored in the abstract tradition. It reflects the spareness of her former work but is livelier and more expressive. The gesterual marks which she uses to maximum effect – form a personal lexicography of non-linguistic writing.

Single letters are often easy on the eye, but the overall complexity and juxtaposition of Barber’s marks and letters make it less about writing and more about the act of thinking itself. These are exquisite illusions, painted with an understanding of depth and structure, where the delicacy of the vision still feels like a spontaneous guesture, a free flowing thought.

Each painting is an outward expression of a thought, a phrase, a memory. These are places of the heart and mind revealed in a complex array of letters, like broken words, with the marks of the scribe looping across the canvas. The free flowing, seemingly spontaneous marks are intersected, folded, circled and connected to clusters of bold roman characters. They make for compelling reading.