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EXHIBITION HISTORY
2017 — SENSATIONS, Long Beach City College, Long Beach, CA (December 2017)
2011 — PASSIONATE FOCUS, Second Sense (formerly the Catholic Guild for the Blind), Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL
2011 — CORE 7: DEFINING OURSELVES, Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica, CA (opened November 19, 2011)
2010 — PASSIONATE FOCUS, Second Sense, Chicago, IL
The 5 Hindrances
Acrylic · 40x30 in · 2009
Five obstacles to a quiet mind, named in Pali — and her own confession threaded through the leaves.
“The FIVE HINDRANCES is an illustration of the Buddhist concept with personal commentary,” Barbara Romain wrote. The five are the classical obstacles to meditation and she painted every one of them by name: KAMACHANDA, VYAPADA, THINA MIDDHA, UDDHACCA-KUKKUCCA, VICIKICCHA — desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, doubt — each with its English beside it.
The personal commentary is the small cursive threaded through the foliage, some of it barely legible: too much, in my case, it happened to you. She drew the diagram and then admitted where she stood in it.
“These layered images often require visual ‘digging’ by the viewer to unearth,” she wrote, “and texts and meanings may not all be immediately apparent.” Here the digging is the practice.
Acrylic on canvas, 2009. Shown at Passionate Focus, Second Sense, Chicago, 2010 and 2011; CORE 7: Defining Ourselves, Santa Monica Art Studios, 2011; and Sensations, Long Beach City College, 2017.
IN POSSESSION OF
Estate of Barbara Romain.
