Installation view, ART BLIND, Kunst im Stapelhaus, Cologne, 2013. Barbara Romain, God's Half-Witted Brother / In the Beginning, 1993; Bad Eye on the Good Foot, 2002; Garden of Eden, 2011. Photograph © Estate of Barbara Romain.
COLLECTIONS
Eight bodies of work.
Barbara Romain’s paintings do not belong to a single style or period. Across more than five decades, the work moved from figuration toward abstraction, language, sound, improvisation, and what she came to call “visual music.”
INCANTATIONS
Language, poetry, and layered fields of color that invite the viewer to consider alternate ways of perceiving.
MONOPRINTS
Works on paper expanding Barbara’s vocabulary through printmaking.
BAD EYE ON THE GOOD FOOT
Music-driven paintings built through bodily gesture and sound. Barbara's signature "visual music."
A PAINTING A DAY
An intensive mid-1990s body of daily diary works combining image and text.
KOZMIK BEATNIK
Los Angeles, popular culture, symbols and shifting narrative.
QUEENS OF THE NIGHT
At the close of Barbara's figurative period, celebrating the glitter rock culture of 1980's Los Angeles.
WHO ARE YOU?
(Early Works)
Figurative and observational paintings from Barbara’s early career.
PUBLIC ART
Murals and installations made for—and often with—communities.
IN HER WORDS
Barbara's Artist Statement
Barbara's statement on this work is held in the Estate archive. Approved researchers and friends of the Estate may request access.
Barbara Romain, Can You See Me?, 2011.
Acrylic on canvas, size unknown.
"Art is not about money; it's not about fame, it's not about success — although we all want those things, that can't be your reason to make art.
I am now inspired less by what I see, and more by what I hear, remember, and imagine. I would put up a big canvas and I would listen to a song over and over again… I would make a layer with the drum and then I would make a layer with the guitar, and on top would be the lyrics usually. I call these paintings my 'visual music'. The thrill of color upon color, which I can see in varying degrees, drives layer upon layer. Gestures of my body replace the precision of my eyes in making marks on the canvas.
My own perception is distorted due to "Swiss cheese" holes in my vision. What I am able to see changes from moment to moment. With a very narrow visual field of 2 degrees, my process takes a lot of different methods of measurement to achieve my desired outcome. In a way, I guess it's a blessing — you always want original work because you always want to be different.
I am just an artist who happens to be blind. My hope is to be accepted… as just an artist — that the work would be enjoyed or interesting… to anybody, with that added fact that yes, she happens to be blind, which informs this and that, but that's not the first thing that's important… about my work.
I try to tell a story with my paintings, whether it be a person, place or thing — each one carries a story from my heart."
Barbara Romain, Hope & Loss, 2007.
Acrylic on canvas, 10 panels, 108 x 90 in.
EXPLORE BY SUBJECT
What the work kept circling.
Barbara Romain’s paintings resist a single visual language. Across decades, figures give way to symbols, flowers to text, animals to memory, landscapes to music. Explore the work by subject and see how the familiar became something else in her hands.
