BARBARA PRATT

Barbara Pratt's work explores the essence and meaning of beauty through realism. She investigates the natural world, capturing the brilliant, transient beauty of petals and flowers

Born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1963, and grew up on the Salmonier River in St. Mary's Bay. Barbara is the youngest daughter of artists Christopher and Mary Pratt. Though she grew up in an artistic household, Pratt remembers being neither actively encouraged nor discouraged from choosing art as a career. She received a Bachelor's degree in English from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia during which time she began pursuing her craft by drawing and painting.

Barbara has had a number of solo exhibitions and has also been featured in a number of group exhibtions in public galleries. Her work has generated a great deal of attention and fuelled the interest of the almost cult-like following her work has inspired.

Barbara currently lives in St. Philip's, Conception Bay, not far from St. John's, with her two sons, Philip and Peter.

Artist Statement:

"This exhibition was inspired by Mrs. Sheila Gushue's garden. While I have to admit that each and every one of these flowers is not actually from her garden, they very well could be. Her flowers are beautiful and she takes great joy in them. Her garden is over grown now, and full of crazy life. Her flowers have gone mad with their freedom from regular maintenance. No longer able to do the hard work that's involved with a big garden, Mrs. Gushue now wanders among her tall peonies smiling at their sunny beauty. There are irises and roses, spiderworts and hostas under the shade of large maples.

I love flowers, as many people do. I love their fragility and their very temporary existence. They are loaded with emotion and memory. We give them as gifts, we pick them to adorn our tables, and we grow them to see them bloom with the arrival of spring. Painting them, for me, is like honoring them. Painting them comes from a desire to keep them and try to make something as beautiful with my own hand that nature made on its own…with a little help from Mrs.Gushue.

Truely, I find inspiration from many places, even paint chips at hardware stores and color-coded files at the doctor's office. Good music makes me want to paint and, of course, I would be nowhere without my female friends who inspire me daily."

Enjoy the show...