Carnaby Street
Estate-Authorized
Framed Archival Fine Art Print
Carnaby Street is one of Barbara Romain's early figurative-pop pieces, c. 1980–1986 from when she was sighted.
Carnaby Street is an 19.5 × 23.5 inch oil painting — and oil is rare in Romain’s largely acrylic archive, a strong marker of it's early date. It is a figurative-pop urban street scene of shopfronts and figures, titled for the Soho street that became shorthand for 1960s “Swinging London” mod fashion and music.
Of the launch works this is the one most rooted in Romain’s pre-diagnosis, and was painted in her signature descriptive manner — “Barbara’s youthful eye,” was caught before the late text-based abstractions.
Carnaby Street — Museum Framed Print
Barbara Romain (1949–2024) was a Philadelphia-trained, Los Angeles–based painter whose work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the de Young Museum, and the John F. Kennedy Center, among others. Diagnosed with a degenerative retinal disease in 1984, she spent four decades pioneering a celebrated body of work she called "visual music"—building paintings from what she could hear, remember, and imagine rather than what she could see. Working with braille-labeled paints, hand-cut stencils, and brilliant color, she turned the loss of sight into a new way of seeing. These prints are released under authorization of the Estate of Barbara Romain.
