Barbara Barkley

I work in handmade paper using pigmented floating fibers swept up and fixed in stillness, creating iconic symbols, dream imagery, and imaginative reconstructions of reality.

I have been making paper for over 30 years and have seen it go to collectors in 28 countries around the world. Fibers from cotton, flax, and other natual long fibered plants are carefully prepared by beating and other processing techniques. The fibers are pigmented primarily with earth pigments or fine chemical lightfast pigments once they are beaten to pulp form. They are then floated in vats of rain water ready to be made into paper. The various colored pulps become the color medium of the art, with no added colored paints. They are archival and archival mounting is always used in the framing process. I finish my work with an light application of museum quality wax to protect the art.