New exhibition April 22 – June 17, 2017
Reception: Saturday evening, April 22, 6:30 – 8:00, Public Invited
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 – 5:30

FOCUS, SPRING 2017

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present Focus, Spring 2017. The exhibition features new work by three contemporary artists: Vivian Kahra, Laura Moriarty and Janna Watson.

German-born artist Vivian Kahra explores “momentariness” – the state of impermanence and continuity and the transformation of the natural world into an architecture of memory. Kahra applies thin layers of watercolor paint on canvas; her light touch and use of negative space let the paintings “breathe” – the paper and canvas hardly touched. She often depicts figures, seen or unseen, caught in a moment, or moving through time and space – sometimes the narrative includes skateboarding and skiing, swimming, or introspective moments of stillness of figures in nature.
In her ongoing series of encaustic (wax and pigment) monotypes, Laura Moriarty channels geology, building up her compositions to mimic processes that shape and form the earth. The artist studies the way events and phenomena occur in the geological time scale, and then creates micro/macro records in encaustic paint imagining what happens below the surface of terrain. Moriarty’s work has been shown internationally and is in numerous museum and private collections. She is the recipient of honors including the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant, two Pollack-Krasner Foundation grants, Zita Orionis Fellowship, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Platte Cove Residence, Franz Masereel Center and has just returned from her residency with the Baer Art Center in Hofsos, Iceland.

This is Canadian artist Janna Watson’s debut with the gallery and in the New York. Her compelling abstract compositions possess an elegant and powerful energy. The artist’s confident paint handling pairs loose brushwork and gestural mark-making varnished with epoxy resin to deepen and add drama to the colors and space. Watson’s work is in several collections including the TD Bank Financial Group, CIBC, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. The Toronto-based artist has exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally.
We maintain an extensive lower level inventory warehouse that includes a private presentation room. Our flat files house hundreds of unframed works on paper. We always have a wide selection of paintings, drawings, prints, monoprints and photographs to offer collectors.