At the Core: Recent Paintings by Barbara Sternberger

The distinguished painter Barbara Sternberger, based in Bellingham, has exhibited widely throughout the US and won numerous awards, including the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award at the Seattle Art Museum. Sternberger was educated at University of California, Irvine (MFA, 1983). Her works since 2019 are a departure from her earlier abstract paintings, which were admired by critics in New York, Washington, DC, and Portland, OR. They comprise her third solo museum exhibition. She has also participated in the US Department of State Art in Embassies program.

Not only are the recent paintings spontaneously generated in the studio without prior drawings or sketches, the artist has suspended use of the brush altogether in favor of smearing custom-blended dry pigments onto the wet canvas surface with her hands. Each canvas is attached to the wall instead of a stretcher or easel so Sternberger can work on top of and through underlying layers of white paint. What she calls “discovery and denial, birthing and letting go” are evident in the abrupt beginnings and trailings within each painting.

Chief curator emeritus of the Portland Art Museum Bruce Guenther has carefully selected 32 canvases relating to the artist’s efforts to “find and convey a sense of Chinese philosophy’s chi—the life force or ‘breath’—through color and in the dense surface of two hands painting [at once].” The poetic smudges and overlapping veils of color of New York School artist Philip Guston are readily acknowledged by both guest curator and the artist.

With her allusions to Chinese philosophy, Sternberger obliquely echoes Northwest School master Mark Tobey’s animated, wandering “white writing” as it navigates the interior world of the picture plane. Sternberger explores the directions of her hands as she uncovers the ultimate image that coheres into a hovering composition.

Opening reception Oct 9, 5–7pm

Artist talk Oct 30, 6pm

westerngallery.wwu.edu