From “ADDRESSING THE MOON” AT GALLERY NAGA
Gallery NAGA, which occupies space on the first floor of the neo-Gothic Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street, is perhaps best known for representing contemporary painters. Laura Barr’s oils, index card-sized depictions of nocturnal scenes, bring the celestial down to earth. Accessible in their simplicity and rich in color and texture, these quadrant assemblages capture sunset and moonlight as we might experience it ourselves, wearing our artists’ glasses, enjoying the saturated colorscape of New England as the day ends and nighttime reflection softens our gaze.
— Misstropolis
HERE AND THERE PANEL #11
Barr’s mini collection of scenes are a delightful amuse bouche. This curator loved Barr’s combination of line, balance of color, and sense of discreet design for this panel.
— Charis J. Carmichael Braun
IN WESTVILLE, KEHLER LIDDELL RINGS IN TWO DECADES OF ARTMAKING
“Across the walls, the 44 artists tell a story of where they have been in the 20 years since Kehler Liddell came onto the scene. Some, like Laura Barr's “Here and There Panel #8 REMIX”, ask that a viewer get close to the work, to study the miniature oil on canvas paintings that together build a story of campsites, open pastures, lavender fields and docks jutting out into the clear, sparkling water.”
— Lucy Gellman
WORDS FROM “HERE AND THERE” SERIES OBSERVERS:
"Love your way of immortalizing beautiful fleeting moments!“
“Your work captures the immediacy of intimate moments.”
REVIEW OF SEA & SOIL
"Laura Barr’s painting covers the wall and makes it teem with life. It’s a trip into warm, blue water, a document of how snorkeling or scuba diving is like visiting another planet, a place radically different from the one we inhabit in the air. And its title — Ocean Elegy 20 — reminds us of just how fast it’s dying.”
”…You could also say that, as perhaps the biggest story of our time and the greatest existential threat to us and life on the planet, environmental concerns will never not be relevant. Regardless of your feelings about the subject, both shows have much to offer beyond the topic at hand. Barr’s paintings skillfully capture the movement of undersea life.“
— Brian Slattery
WORDS FROM A COLLECTOR
"We are so so enjoying these!
I know one shouldn’t try to break the spell of art in words, but I can’t resist trying to express why they speak to me. Like their creator, they blend order, balance and reason with the sensual warmth of organic, natural shapes. Then, in the reflection of shattered light and deep color, magic happens, beyond both human order and sensual experience.
I feel the same way about the magical community and landscape in which we live, and these paintings evoke in me a deep gratitude for being in this world. Thank you."
— Linda Meyer
REVIEW OF ROCK WATER GLASS
"What's not to like — neat drawing, nifty composition, fresh, clear color rising at times to the refulgent, Laura Barr hews to her plan of catching the place and moment where abstraction and representation meet. You can see her joyfully exploiting her sources and influences — Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud most notably. She swears by what she learned from Barnet Rubenstein in Boston. There is an affinity with Janet Fish, but maybe not a close one. Ms. Barr avoids crowding, keeping an open framework through which the forms of her tumblers can come and go.
Meanwhile her palette is on the move. The chromatic still lives of the terrace have given way to a much cooler color in the dining room, with, to this viewer, a decided gain in cohesion and impact.
The show is enhanced by the shift in format and style between the dining room works and those of the rotunda. The quasi-cubist interpenetration of forms, allowing for explorations of the play between the transparent and the translucent, are here replaced by a direct confrontation with the flat forms of the quarry reflected in water. Symmetry and flatness underlie the close observation of natural forms irradiated in a brilliant light. Ms. Barr avoids a facile parallelism — she wants us to follow her acceptance of nature's datum and makes it easy to believe that the abstract and the natural inhere in each other.
This is a splendid show by an artist whose career will be worth following."
— Bill Cobbett