Forrest Gallery
| Contact: Barbara Forrest |
| 16672 SW 89th place |
| Tigard, Oregon 97224 |
| Website: forrestgallery.net |
| Contact Forrest Gallery via e-mail |
Barbara Forrest is an Oregon and Colorado based landscape artist who works in watercolor and ceramics. Her paintings are characterized by a richness of color and a bright and bold style which is immediately recognizable as her own. She has employed many of the same characteristics in her ceramic work, which is mainly hand built and carved ceramic tiles and mixed media pieces.
Art and the outdoors have been a part of Barbara’s life since her childhood in the St. Louis, Missouri area. One of her earliest memories is sketching the scene in a city park, and the landscape continues to be her primary focus. She particularly enjoys the vastness of the American west…mountains, rivers, high deserts, forests, and rugged coastlines are among her favorite subjects.
After many years of studying and painting while holding down a career as a clinical audiologist, she began to devote herself to art full time in 1996. She has studied painting in Texas, Canada, Oregon and New Mexico. Her love of travel combines well with landscape painting and she takes a camera with her wherever she goes, snapping thousands of pictures which end up in her studio. Sometimes this requires some creative exploring and hiking to get just the right composition; she has leaned over precipices, stood on rocks in the middle of a river, climbed on top of ancient stone walls and clung to tree branches to get the perfect shot. She believes this work pays off in her final painting as her goal is to paint things that will really connect with people; paintings of actual places where she can say, I was there, and the viewer is also transported to the same place. She is enjoying the addition of texture with her new ceramic work while still employing her drawing and painting skills.
In painting, I work in watercolors, acrylics and pastels. Sometimes I will combine 2 or three of these, or I will insert a photograph I have taken in the finished work, or I will paint over sheet music. In my ceramics, I still use the landscape as my primary focus, and I enjoy painting with glazes over carved ceramic peices. I embellish them with wood branch accents.
