ARTIST STATEMENT – BARBARA CADARIO

 

Award-winning, Vancouver-based artist Barbara Cadario creates art that expresses tranquillity, beauty and the strength of the human spirit.

During the pandemic, her interests have pivoted to focus on colour as a metaphor for energy and beauty, and lost edges  because we are all a little lost right now.

Why poetic? Sensitive, personal, creative, and unique - that is the poetic aspect of this art.

Since the age of 9, oil paint has been her favourite medium due to its rich colours and sensuous texture. Barbara also works in acrylic, watercolour and other media. She has a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art+Design along with several other university degrees, and her paintings are held in private collections in Canada, California and England. Barbara has illustrated three children’s picture books to raise money for charitable organizations. She greatly enjoys commissions that involve working with an individual to create a very personal painting.

She says,

“I am for paintings that are unapologetically beautiful;

I am for paintings that are representational yet may slip into abstraction;

I am for paintings that are perceptual with conceptual undertones;

I am for paintings that communicate the poetics of everyday life, echoing the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres;

I am for paintings that capture the beauty of light and reflection, as revealed by Mary Pratt;

I am for paintings that tell a story and invite you to wonder what comes next;

I am for an art that relives the happy moments of the past;

I am for an art that imagines the future;

I am for paintings that play with time and space;

I am for paintings of the expressive human body;

I am for paintings that are contemporary while honouring past masters.”

(with apologies to Claes Oldenberg’s “I am for an art”, 1961)