Barbara Ann Stanley

These works of art were created during the pandemic starting the last Sunday in May 2020. I have two friends: Sally Novak - website & Instagram, who is a Brooklyn, NY artist, and Melissa Osborne - website, who is a Dallas, TX artist. I asked them if they wanted to do a once-a-week art Zoom meeting for a few hours where we would pick a photo and would each work in whatever medium we wanted. We would try to keep it small so we could finish it in a week. Well, finishing it in a week didn’t happen & small is relative, but we pretty much accomplished one a month. After we each had a couple of turns picking a photo we decided we wanted to do our own art. I had and still have old works I want to finish. Blue Bird of Happiness, My Heart’s Desire is the start of my own work. The two pet portraits were commissions and were separate from our Art Zoom meetup, but since they were created during the pandemic I included them.

This process has improved my drive and discipline and has helped to hush my paralyzing art critic. Melissa and Sally are my art Graces.

The Wrestlers are a new ongoing series of oil paintings.  The paintings come from photos off my iPhone that I took of the movie "The Master" I was watching on the TV.  It's taking something that originally had meaning as part of a whole, a linear storyline to a story of immediacy.  The photos I freeze that moment in time and stop the story.  I broke down the photo and simplified the images into brush strokes.  This makes for a totally different story and sense of intimacy as the eye travels over the image on the canvas.  

The movie "The Master" set in the 1950’s, opens with a scene on the beach of sailors standing around cheering their buddies on as they wrestle.  Having been a masseuse, I find the human body fascinating.  I think that is why that particular scene in “The Master” was so compelling to me.  I kept rewinding and pausing and taking photos.

I’m also drawn to that period because my parents met in the ’50s and both were in the Navy.  One of my favorite photos is of my dad on the beach in his Navy-issued khaki shorts.  I like the feeling of capturing the moment in time that photos offer.  I had just turned six when he was killed in a Naval jet crash.  Most of my memories of my father are from photos, not actual experiences I remember.  

Another pull for me of the image of the wrestler is the one of the ego wrestling with the higher self, the internal struggle. 

I am also drawn to the homoerotic nature of wrestling due to its close contact and lack of layers of protective padding.  Because of the naive sexual aspect of the 50s, there was less fear of homoeroticism in the sport.  But over the years as the LGBTQI community was finding its voice, the fear set in, and the hyper-masculine behavior of the sporting institution of the World Wrestling Entertainment counteracted this by turning the wrestling from a competitive sport to dramatic theater by use of props and brutal showmanship moves.  

Coming full circle the gay community is now for the most part commonplace.  Most straight people know someone who is gay.  Also with the metrosexual evolution that started in the mid 1990s and the hipster evolution that started in the mid-2000s, the masculine is coming in touch with its feminine side so same-sex human contact is no longer as feared nor labeled.  The beauty, strength, and exquisiteness of body wrestling can shine through as it did during the first Olympics in 776 B.C.  Hence, my symbolic use of the color violet for shading represents higher consciousness and transformation of the soul.

The Navy plane in the fourth piece 'Constellation' came about because of of working out spatial dynamics.  The plane ties in with the period of the 50s when my father flew in the Navy.  He flew a Navy airplane - Constellation, so I chose that one to put it in the painting.  I like how the airplane grounds the wrestlers in time.

Art has a long history of women’s bodies being viewed that were mainly painted, purchased, and appreciated by men. I find beauty in beauty in the human body and I paint from an intuitive feminine perspective and sensibility. I found working on this series of male bodies is powerful and voluptuous when voluptuous is usually reserved to describe the woman’s body.

I like to work with large canvases because of its physicality.  The oil paintings range in size from 3 X 3 feet to 3 X 5 feet.  I have four paintings pretty much complete (the first four shown)  I have three works in progress and two more that will include black men wrestling to finish the series.  My vision for the show is for the paintings to hang with the horizon line matching each horizon line of each painting that is hung around the gallery space. Thus a literal horizon line guides the view from one painting to the next.  

The last two or three paintings will include black wrestlers (a black wrestler wrestling with a white wrestler and two black wrestlers wrestling with each other). The big psychic picture is ultimately about us wrestling with our egos no matter our race, culture, gender, or socioeconomic background. We get constant messages from society to do better, be better, and get ahead at all costs. Making us believe that we have to wrestle “the other” to the ground so we can become the best version of ourselves. When ultimately it is ourselves that we need to come to terms with.

Keep checking back to view my progress in The Wrestler series and please sign up to have an email sent to know where & when it will be shown.  

Oil pastel portraits  

Watercolor portraits 

The four seasons I'm representing in collage.  I'm currently working on Fall and Winter for this series.  

Summer Night Sky was the first one I did.  I was in a deep depression after my mother passed away.  My dear friend led me into my studio and told me to just start on something, anything.  I started cutting positive words out of magazines - positive affirmations that I needed, though I didn't realize at the time.  When I found the photo of the diamond broach it just felt like a star. Then came the background of night skies and then the star templates I use on images of blueberries, lava, tiger . . .  There is a dove carrying away the word Cloud Of Depression and an astronaut holds the words Protect Mother Earth as his life cord is attached to earth.  I love the positive words fueling the star to shoot across the night sky.  I was doing therapy with a grief counselor whose first name was Summer.  So in honor of her excellent therapy, I used her first name in the title - Summer Night Sky which was the beginning of my four-season series.  

I started Spring Awakenings in a good frame of mind and wanted it to be potent with joy, possibility, and pollination, hence the abundance of flowers, butterflies, birds, and sensual bodies.  

Keep checking back to see Fall and Winter.       

My foray into Soft Pastel started with chalk festivals.  I was discovered by a patron who saw my street artwork.  She hired me to copy a Paul Gauguin in soft pastel and then helped me to have a one-woman show of my soft pastels.

I much more enjoy working on soft paper in my art studio over rubbing chalk into asphalt in the hot sun down on my knees and ass.  I miss engaging with the public, the art studio can be very isolating sometimes.   

This is a mystic animal chakra series.  Each chakra has an animal symbol.  Back in the late 90s, I did meditation for each chakra animal to reveal what my animal for the chakra was about.  

Life Preserver The Elephant is the animal symbol for the fifth chakra. The element is space. My elephant is gently cradling me in the water. This gives me a sense of spaciousness, which is reflected in my body.

Penetrate The Antelope is the animal symbol for the fourth chakra. The element is air and it has to do with a deeper understanding of yourself and others - love.  This art piece came from a meditation on the fourth chakra animal symbol the antelope.  To get beyond the heart charka you have to penetrate the heart.  My antelope is lying down with its hooves tucked under it.  The view is from on top.  The head is laid back over its body after it pierces its own heart with its horn and bleeds the blood that is purified - represented by white.  Its horns represent the union of the -negative/positive, yin/yang, feminine/masculine -energies. Note they are colored opposites. Having just penetrated the heart a halo emits from its head. My antelope is in a vulnerable lying down position with limbs tucked underneath.  The view is looking down on top of it.  My antelope has put its head back so its antlers pierce its heart (left side) since only when one can understand the depths of suffering can one understand another’s.  Because of this understanding, its blood is pure, hence the color white.  And the hallow that radiates out of the top of the antelope's head represents the air element and the green is the color of the heart Chakra.  

Shattered The Ram is the animal symbol for the third chakra. The element is fire. This chakra has to do with will. My rams are butting heads - my will vs god's will. This is so much force between the two rams that the energy becomes white, like a spark.

Drowning The Crocodile is the animal symbol for the second Chakra. The element is water, and it has to do with emotions and sexuality.  My crocodile is afraid of drowning in its natural element, which is that it lives in water.  It's thrashing to get out of what it perceives as a life-or-death situation. The “air” is red because the fear of survival and the belief that I am not ok is all in my mind.

TWICE BAKED is a short, black & white, fun, film noir I filmed and edited. It stars Sally Christensen-Novak, Schotzie Stanley. Music by Moby.

This was a college project.  A few years ago I had the film digitized and re-edited it.  Because of artist Moby and his free music www.mobygratis.com/                            I was able to finish my short film.