By Tona Barkley

EXHIBIT STATEMENT

I’m fascinated by the emotional impact of color. For this exhibit, I decided to expand on a concept that I started experimenting with a couple of years ago: figures in an abstracted, color-field style. The figures tend to extend beyond the edges of the painting, with very flat planes and no modeling. These ideas were inspired by a number of 20th century artists that I admire, such as Henri Matisse, Milton Avery, David Hockney and Mark Rothko. Exploring this concept this year has been super fun and has stimulated many adjacent ideas and experiments. I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the possibilities of this one approach.

Creating these paintings is a process of discovery. I have no idea where I'll end up when I begin. Each of these paintings has gone through multiple changes, which I record photographically, and under every color area are layers and layers of applications.

The mirror gives an artist a ready model at any time, and I’ve been drawing and painting myself occasionally since high school (60 years ago). A few years ago, I began collecting all these works from my sketchbooks and putting them in chronological order. I believe that now, as I enter into my 79th year, it's time to share them.

ARTIST BIO

Tona Barkley is known for her figurative paintings in oil, watercolor, gouache or pen and ink, including custom portraits.

Two of her outstanding portraits hang in the Kentucky State Capitol: her official oil portrait of former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Janet Stumbo and a watercolor portrait in the Kentucky Women Remembered collection. The University of Kentucky Hospital purchased 14 of her music-related works which are on display in a hallway on the main floor of Chandler Hospital, and her work is included in the Brown-Forman collection in Louisville. Also a quiltmaker, Tona designed the Celebration Quilt for the opening of the Kentucky History Center in 1999.

A graduate of Vassar College, Tona retired from KET where she served as Communications Director. The Paducah native raised her children in Frankfort and now lives on a farm in Owen County, Kentucky. She involves her nine grandchildren in her art and the traditional Kentucky music that she and husband John Harrod play.