Madonna of the Freeway
Barbara Romain
Estate-Authorized
Gallery Wrapped Canvas
Madonna of the Freeway is Barbara Romain’s Los Angeles shrine: sacred, mechanical, arguing with itself. Originally 16 × 20 inches, oil on canvas. A Madonna and Child in hot Expressionist color, transposed onto the 101 — palms, halos, attendant angels, and, circling above, helicopters. The piece was painted over an earlier Madonna and Child and later refined with those freeway details, which makes it doubly Barbara: a painter who never stopped editing the world she put down.
Madonna of the Freeway — Gallery Wrapped Canvas
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.
