Carol Barsha

Carol Barsha is a painter whose primary medium is ink, pastel and oil paint. Working with both brushes and oil sticks, she applies paint in spontaneous, gestural strokes as well as in smooth layers. Her symbolic, often surreal paintings on canvas and paper are influenced by observations from nature as well as imagined phenomena. The basic elements of the world: water, air, earth and fire, as well as a curiosity about the human condition, pervade her work. She is fascinated by Renaissance art and the idea of transformation, and approaches the mundane with unpremeditated reverence.

( excerpted from Jean Lawlor Cohen in Where/Washington 1998)