Richard Barlow / USA
Richard Barlow installation ‘Barranco’ at Joya: AiR chalk on blackboard paint / 213 x 610 cm
2025
“Erebus” chalk on blackboard paint 244 x 701 cm 2019
“Swallowhead” chalk on blackboard paint 427 x 272 & 427 x 262 cm 2024
“Manifest” chalk on blackboard paint 595 x 1996 cm 2018
“My recent artistic practice is largely devoted to drawing, centered on a series of large scale, temporary and site specific drawings of the natural world produced with chalk on blackboard paint, directly on the gallery walls. These drawings are erased at the end of their exhibition.
The imagery has come from various sources, but most of my recent projects have been produced working with my own photographic documentation. “Barranco” -- produced in my studio at Joya -- was based upon photographs I took in the area, “Erebus” is based upon photographs I took during the Arctic Circle residency, and “Swallowhead” is based upon photographs I took of Swallowhead Spring, the source of the River Kennet in England. An exception was “Manifest,” at the Bellevue Arts Museum, which I produced from historical photographs of the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the aftermath of intensive logging in the area.
The fragility of these ephemeral landscape drawings, their fleeting nature, and the fact that viewers’ presence and interaction interaction with the drawings (touching or brushing against them) could destroy the images all map onto both environmental and existential concerns, and is redolent of memory and loss”.
photo Simon Beckmann
Richard Barlow has an MFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is a two-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Drawing, and the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, among other awards. Richard Barlow’s art was the subject of an article on the Art 21 website, “The Art of Letting Go.” He has taken part in several residencies, including The Arctic Circle, NES Iceland, The Wassaic Project, Chateau d’Orquevaux, Sail Britain and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the US and Internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum, The Philbrook Museum and Landskrona Foto. Born in Harlow, Essex, he emigrated to the US with his family as a child. He lives in Oneonta, NY, in the Catskill Mountains, where he teaches Drawing and Painting at Hartwick College.