About Barbara

I am an artist and writer working with paper, paint, cloth, and pigment, drawn to what Celtic tradition calls “thin places”—where the natural world and lived experience meet, and simple materials hold meaning and quiet beauty.

My practice begins with attention—the act of slowing down enough to notice what is often overlooked. Weathered surfaces, worn paper, shifting light, and fragments shaped by nature all inform my work. Making art is a way of working with what I see and experience over time.

I make abstract paintings, mixed-media collages, plant-dyed papers, and hand-bound journals. In the studio, I return to a piece again and again, building layers, scraping back, and allowing the surface to shift before it settles.

I am drawn to materials that show their history—vintage papers, linen fabrics, used coffee filters, tea bags, and plant-dyed cloth. I burn grapevines to make charcoal and dye fabric with onion skins and avocado pits, working with simple processes that allow materials to stain, soften, and change. These materials guide the work as much as I do.

I am attentive to how meaning and the traces of story are carried, both in what is visible and what is not. I sometimes incorporate lines of poetry or fragments of handwriting into a piece, letting them remain or disappear within the layers.

My background in counseling psychology and writing informs this attention to story—how experience is layered, remembered, and held over time. I think of my work as a way of gathering and working with those layers, allowing form and meaning to emerge gradually.

Teaching is also part of my practice. Through workshops and gatherings, including work with Paisley Project, I share simple, nature-based approaches to art and writing. The focus is on process—on paying attention and working with materials—rather than on a finished result.

I grew up in Colorado, spent many years in Oregon, and now live in Northern California. When I’m not in the studio, I’m usually outside—working in the garden, hiking the oak-covered trails near my home or along the beach, or out on the water.

At its core, my work is a way of noticing—of working with what is in front of me and allowing form, meaning, and story to emerge over time.