Barbara Cole

Figure transformation has been a predominant theme in Barbara Cole’s work, who over the past thirty years has been operating as a painter but employing traditional photographic tools.

This canvas is reworked with a toolkit that includes clouds, reflections, plastic sheeting, cloth-encased figures as well as aperture, shutter speed and artificial lighting. The artist will photograph from above in order to flatten the perspective. It is important to capture these photographic constructions completely in-camera, creating everything on site, rather than later with Photoshop as much as possible.

Over the past decade, Cole’s practice has explored the medium of water, which has become a natural lens that refocuses and reinterprets her painterly aesthetic. Water allows for movement of the human figure in unconventional ways. Photography affords the ability to play with notions of time and place. By seeing through water, rather than through air, Cole is able to re-envision the nature of our relationship to our surroundings. Working in the water also provides an ideal space to continue to explore figurative. It also allows refocused attention on this natural resource which we have in abundance but is often taken for granted.

Barbara Cole's artwork is extensively collected by both public and private institutions, and has been exhibited worldwide in such venues as the Canadian embassies in Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan. Throughout her career, Cole has worked internationally on commercial projects and large-scale art commissions including installations for the Breast Cancer Centre in Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital and for Trump Hollywood, Florida. She has won prestigious awards such as the Grand Prize at the Festival International de la Photographie de Mode in Cannes, and third prize at the International Photography Awards in New York. Barbara Cole lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Submitted by Art Angels