Barbara Brenner

In ecaustic works, Barbara Brenner transforms chaos into calm. Mixed-media artist Barbara Brenner makes it apparent that experiences of chaos and unsettlement can be resolved through images expressing quiet and calm. With subtle pigments, wax, and a camera, she produces works that might be described as still points in a turning world. Brenner is no stranger to challenges and change. In fact, it is what her art – lush, close-up color photographs of flowers and plants, and evocative, abstract encaustic compositions – stems from.  Hers was a childhood full of music, divorced and dichotomous parents, and, especially, relocation. 

While hints of such turbulence may be found in the inchoate, biomoprhic forms that fill Brenner’s compositions, their soft, hazy layers of pigment and wax speak of the calm she found in the life she made for herself after leaving her parents’ home – a life characterized by stability and art making. 

“Above all, my work has movement, yet my images are strangely peaceful. I have finally found a private sphere away from public chaos.” - Brenner