Barbara Holt

I am primarily a painter with a strong affinity for the gestural mark and an appetite for experimentation. My degrees include a BFA in Painting from the School Visual Arts and an MFA in Painting from SUNY New Paltz. I have also undertaken coursework at the Woodstock School of Art and the Boca Raton Museum Art School.

After a career in Art Education I have returned full force to my own creative practice. My work has been shown in Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Arts Society of Kingston, Arts Mid-Hudson and Emerge Gallery in Saugerties.

My current landscape work begins with my own photographs of an intriguing vista. In the process of framing/cropping the photo I am already editing the complexity of the view into a compelling composition. After that I focus on the most vital elements (to my eye) and loosely set them into place. Following that is a journey of dominance and recession as I rebalance the subtle interplay of the sections and the illusion of distance.

I seek a surface tension and energy befitting the natural world. I try to reveal the fierceness of nature hidden beneath its common countenance.