B.A.C. Hennig-Loomis

I currently reside in the  Tidewater area of Virginia having previously lived throughout the United States and in western Europe.  My education in the arts has been  varied, and I have had some formidable guides along the way. My mother,  an art major herself, came of age when abstraction and expressionism  were guiding forces, and took away any anxiety or compulsion I might  have had about making a work “look real”. Tom Moore, currently of  Fayetteville, N.C., made the lightbulbs go on when he told me about color, and that there were “a million right ways to paint, and only  three or four wrong ones.” Cleo Mullins, then teaching Art Conservation  at Virginia Commonwealth University, taught me about the importance of  respecting the physical characteristics of materials, the character of  any artist`s mark, sheer physical endurance, and about the impact of the passage of time.  I hold an undergraduate degree in Art History from  VCU; my graduate studies in the same were conducted as a Fulbright  Fellow in Germany, and I completed a Masters of Fine Art in Visual  Studies in December of 2012.

Before coming to the  easel regularly, I have worked as a writer, editor, a museum  administrator, teacher and illustrator. My current focus is on exploring  the reflective qualities and the subtle tonal scales of silverpoint, and the transparency of oil paint.  I like to paint things that are close  at hand, and draw what is closer yet.   I am always looking for the  interstices where ordinary things shift and become something  extraordinary and work to capture that shift.  Usually there’s a  portrait on an easel in the studio as well-I enjoy the challenge of  portraiture and its collaborative nature.  In painting them, I am guided by the principle that much is revealed about a subject in the casual  parenthesis and that life is a rich pageant.

Please e-mail Barbara at: smallcanvas@hotmail.com or write to:
Barbara Hennig-Loomis
507 Warrick Road Chesapeake, VA 23322

website:  smallcanvas.net