Stacy Barter attended Parsons School of Design in New York City. Her award-winning work has been featured in galleries in San Francisco, Palm Desert and Carmel, California, and Vail, Colorado. She’s represented by Sportsman’s Gallery Ltd./Paderewski Fine Art of Atlanta, Georgia, and Beaver Creek, Colorado; Eisenhauer Gallery of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Sherwood’s Gallery in Houston; Art-Vue Gallery in Cocoa, Florida; and Villa Fiorenza in Winter Park, Florida. Learn more at www.stacybarter.com.

My Grandmother Dreams in Peonies (left; oil, 22x28) and Jug with Tangerines and Cloth (below, right; oil, 18x14)

To see a step-by-step demonstration of how Barter painted My Grandmother Dreams in Peonies, plus a detail of her brushwork, visit our website at www.

artistsnetwork.com/article/barter-demo.

Compelled to capture the featherlike petals, she created a sense of inward movement by pulling her brushwork into each flower’s center. “I painted petals curving away from a flower and reaching for the background with more pressure and less paint,” she explains. “Strokes painted in this way often pick up background color and give the impression that a surface or object is receding or curving away.” Applying brushstrokes in opposite directions can also help describe a shift from light on an object and the shadow. She purposely keeps shadows and backgrounds quiet and smooth, saving her painterly,

thick strokes for the light-value, focal areas.

Barter works wet into wet and considers a piece successful if it plays all possible opposites against each other: “Dark vs. light, thick vs. thin, soft vs. hard, no detail vs. detail—all composed into a beautiful and pleasing flow of light and movement.” Toward that aim, carefully avoiding detailed drawing, she begins by massing in broad shapes and then, after introducing the background, homes in on values by establishing the darkest darks and lightest lights. Then she jumps into the focal area: “I’ve found that if I get these areas described and they look exciting, the rest of the painting needs much less to bring it to completion. There are always details to be added, but I don’t hold off on all of them until the end. I put them in as I go, including highlights. Thinking about the finish right from the beginning gets me visually excited and saves effort in the long run.”

As an instructor, she counsels beginners to be selective about painting every little nuance— encouraging them to push darks and lights for drama, make

statements with authority and use lots of paint. “Be brave! It’s just paint,” she laughs. “We aren’t jumping out of airplanes. It’s safe to explore and try new things.”

Explaining her daring style, she says: “I want my work to be both powerful and compelling from across the room. And when viewers get up close, I want them to be struck by expressive brushwork and selective detailing, to see what I was fascinated by and—even if they don’t notice how deliberate my choices were—to be drawn to what I wanted them to be most captivated by.”

November 2008 ■ www.artistsmagazine.com