Mother Earth
Acrylic on canvas, 36 × 24 inches, 2011
ABOUT THIS WORK
Barbara Romain, Mother Earth, 2011. Acrylic on canvas, 36 × 24 in. © Estate of Barbara Romain.
2015 — SACRED MEMORIES, Pico House Gallery, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument, Los Angeles, CA (October–November 2015)
2014 — PASSIONATE FOCUS, Second Sense, Chicago, IL. Patron Sponsor: Rick and Dee Dee Chesley
2014 — CORE 10: DEFINING OURSELVES
2011–12 — ART ABILITY, Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, Malvern, PA
COMING SOON
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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Barbara Romain (1948–2024)
Barbara Romain was an American painter, writer, performer, and creative provocateur whose work explored the intersection of music, memory, language, and perception. Based in Los Angeles and trained in Philadelphia, she developed a distinctive artistic practice she called "visual music," creating paintings that translated rhythm, emotion, and lived experience into vibrant fields of color, gesture, and text.
In 1984, Romain was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive degenerative eye disease that would eventually leave her legally blind. Rather than abandoning her artistic practice, she transformed the challenge into a new way of seeing. For the next four decades, she created paintings from what she could hear, remember, imagine, and feel, building a body of work that stands as one of the most compelling explorations of creativity beyond conventional vision.
Romain's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the de Young Museum, the Holter Museum of Art, the John F. Kennedy Center, and the ART BLIND exhibition in Cologne, Germany, among others. Her life and artistic process were featured in the award-winning 2013 documentary Can You See Me?, which brought international attention to her pioneering approach to painting.





