BARBARA ROMAIN
BARBARA ROMAIN
Spring Flowers
Acrylic on wood, 36 × 48 inches
ABOUT THIS WORK
Spring Flowers is the loudest quiet painting in the estate. At 36 × 48 inches — painted in acrylic on wood, an unusual substrate in Barbara Romain's archive — it is the largest piece in the launch catalog and the broadest entry into her landscape work. She painted from memory, color and rhythm rather than literal observation, and that's exactly what this is: not a record of flowers but the feel of bloom as an act of force. Stand close and you can almost hear the season insisting itself into the room.
AVAILABLE FORMATS
ESTATE EDITIONS
GALLERY-WRAPPED CANVAS
MUSEUM FRAMED
GALLERY-MOUNTED ACRYLIC
ALSO AVAILABLE
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Barbara Romain (1949–2024)
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.
