Voices: The Stories That Create Us

Gallery 1202 presents another segment to our 'Voices Series', an online exclusive exhibition, The Stories That Create Us, a new body of work by contemporary abstract artist, Laurie Barmore. This series features 20 new abstract masterpieces on wood panels.

From the artist:

      "This series of mixed media paintings was created around the premise that our stories (the personal experiences, relationships, challenges, failures, successes) and the emotions tied to them are instrumental in our growth as humans.  They change us in incremental non-linear ways on our journey towards our best selves.  

      Journaling has been one way for me to tell my story throughout my adult life, even if only within the pages of a book.  The telling of the story creates an environment that allows the teller to examine events, feelings, observations and insights that lead to self-discovery and growth. As time moves forward, the feelings surrounding the story are remembered with more clarity than the actual facts. The movement in the act of writing in a journal creates a shift from thinking and describing emotions, and brings them back into the body through gesture.  The memory is then experienced indirectly as in music, dance, or painting.  The details of our stories are unique to us, but the range of human emotions are common to all and provide a link between us.

     I have integrated my practice of journaling with painting.  Each piece has collaged journal pages, asemic writing on vellum or rice paper, and cutout scriptshapes.   The script-like elements appearing in the painting can be described as asemic writing.  A “seme” is defined as a unit of meaning, therefore “asemic” is without meaning.  Michael Jacobson (“On Asemic Writing”) defines it as “a shadow, impression, and abstraction of conventional writing.”  Instead of being read as letters and words, asemic writing carries rhythm and tempo, and is suggestive of emotion.  As do the gestural strokes in painting, asemic writing can open the imagination, expanding it outwards to include each of us on a personal felt level.

     Each painting is an invitation to explore your own past stories and their influence on you today, and to celebrate the good, the challenging, and even what you’ve overcome along the way."

-Laurie Barmore