Barbara Herzfeld
Barbara Herzfeld is a painter who holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She was a textile designer for twenty years. More recently, she has worked in education and now teaches art to a range of young students.
Barbara’s pieces depict grand Sumo Wrestlers in surreal color and pattern as an amalgam of beauty and aggression. They are a slew of motion and energy. Herzfeld describes, “I loved the skin on skin closeness of these large nearly naked opponents captured in what might be perceived as an aggressive or passionate embrace with facial expressions that could be either amorous or fierce.” In her large watercolors that barely contain the sumo pairs, she pushes this ambiguity of intimacy and aggression while in the smaller acrylic paintings, the wrestlers affectionately curl up with large docile animals.
In 2019, during a studio visit, a collector suggested that she consider painting regular men and women. She tried it. By the time the COVID crisis began, she had made the shift from painting sumos to a more personal exploration of intimacy and sex between everyday people. What persists is that her couples, like the sumos, are entangled with one another. Barbara’s body is central to all her ideas, and her work is an organic exploration and expression of her self. Now that she is living the solitary life that so many of us are experiencing, her focus has shifted, now, to an individual figure as she explores the beauty, lust, and fury of her own isolated flesh.
Barbara Herzfeld has been in solo and group shows at Brandeis University, Harvard University, and several Brooklyn and Manhattan galleries. She was a finalist for a grant from The Massachusetts Council On The Arts. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition at The Carter Burden Gallery.
Website: www.barbaraherzfeld.com
Artwork Available on Artsy