Barbara Penn: "Bringing the Mind Home".
Barbara Penn is a local artist who focuses on painting and drawing projects. She was a featured artist at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in October, and presented her work to a group of interested scholars. The project presented was entitled "Bringing the Mind Home", which Barbara had been at work on for the past three years. The artwork shown displayed a variety of emotions that Penn had been going through. Penn explained how she felt that painting brings a person to the "now" in life, which is so important as we often forget the "now" and instead focus too much on the future. Art allows time for a person to slow down and think. An example that she used is when you are grieving or are ill, society expects you to move forward and return to normal as quickly as possible, but painting gives you as much time as you need. .
The media that Penn used for her pieces of work was acrylic paint on large tarps. Some of the art work focused on politics of current discussion, others were about love, religion, eastern philosophy, age, death, illness, letting go of things, terrorism and so on. Each work within the project has a title of it's own and focuses on something complete different from the other works within the project. .
The first painting shown was called "Painters Ode to Passion". This piece of art focused on how art is received in the country. It is about being able to speak up and get involved in life and it's opportunities. The second painting was entitled "Bada Dada". This primarily focused on love in our culture and in eastern philosophy. The three figures within the artwork represent three women that she met at one point and discussed different ideas of culture with. The third painting titled "Healing Mothers" is about letting go of things in life and preparing for death. It discusses the bumps that take place in life and the moments of surprise that often occur.