BARBARA BOEKELMAN – So to Speak – 5-29 Nov, 2024

Barbara Boekelman’s large-scale paintings brim with vitality and intricacy. Reworking is central to her method. Using representative imagery as a starting point, she draws, obscures, wipes away, redraws and paints over, gradually surrendering to a predominantly abstract fusion of colour and form. In an intuitive exercise of concealing and revealing, the foreground and background continuously shift. This alternation between abstraction and figuration allows Barbara to rejoice in the liberty of expression, actively refusing to choose one over the other.

The paintings accumulate atmosphere and emotional tone as they develop and, although the initial stories and ideas are not at first glance obvious, they infuse the direction of the whole composition. With a background in journalism, Boekelman’s work is often socially or politically driven and always close to her heart. Her titles provide clues for the viewer and she sees them as integral to the finished work.

Barbara Boekelman is a Ōtautahi Christchurch based artist who was born in the Netherlands where, during the late 1980s, she attended art school. She moved to Aotearoa and in 2022 graduated with a MFA from the Ilam School of Art, University of Canterbury. Recently she was placed third in the international BBA Art Prize in Berlin.