The O-town Scene

Artist of the month: Richard Barlow About the Artist Richard Barlow of Oneonta is an assistant professor of drawing and painting at Hartwick College. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 2005. Before coming to Hartwick, Barlow taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Cloud State University, Macalester College and the College of Visual Art. Barlow's work includes murals, installations, paintings and drawings. Barlow's work has been Powderhorn Park mural, Minneapolis featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. His chalk drawings on blackboard paint are pat of a group exhibit, "Into the Woods," on display at Hartwick College through Jan. 31. In an artist's statement, Barlow said: "Initially I produced landscape based work that was created programmatically or through accident and abstraction. I was fascinated by how many people seem to want these to be real places, and even more importantly, want to believe these places must be important to me or have a narrative source. ... I have become interested in ... painting images of places that are unknown to me and to attempt, through the rhetoric of painting, to produce apparently meaningful images. To approach these ideas in a new way I have recently begun appropriating the landscape imagery in my work from 'Like Nothing Else,' chalk on blackboard paint; part of 'Into other artists' paintings and the Woods,' a site-specific installation, Hartwick College photographs." 16 O-Town Scene January 9, 2014 'Pixelated Bromide,' sequins and latex paint About the Art From an artist's statement: 'In this series the sublime and Romantic landscape imagery is once again appropriated from common visual culture. I am frequently struck by the use of landscape imagery in advertising, and how it is used to manipulate feelings and sell products that may have very little to do with the natural world. In this series I appropriate the landscape imagery from SUV ads, where their use is practically de rigueur. The implication, of course, is that these products will somehow bring you the experience of these spaces, and their ownership will deliver an experience of the sublime. This is in stark contrast to the other suggestion, that these products will allow you to enter and dominate these landscapes. Of course, the consumption and emissions of these vehicles also ensure the slow destruction of the beauty used to sell them. I am hoping that my presentations of these images foreground their sense of the sublime and the beautiful, allowing a viewer to be seduced by the imagery stripped of its context. As opposed to my "Covers" and "Daily Bromides" series I am not entirely interested in stripping out meaning and context here. I hope the realization that these beautiful images are used to sell Hummers is distressing. The materials are intended to comment on this, too. The chalk drawings are ephemeral and temporary, fragile and destined to be destroyed.'

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