Barbara Mink
Don’t Look Down; Ink and acrylic; 46” x 65”
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artist's statementI am exhilarated by creating and counterbalancing formal oppositions of line and color, form and space, light and dark, organic and architectonic, diffusion and thickening, surface and depth. I struggle to bring out the mysterious and ineffable beyond the mundane: I feel a strong kinship with Lyrical Abstraction, from Kandinsky to Frankenthaler, Hartung to Zao Wou-Ki, .
Even when tending toward the monochromatic, color is always an important part of my work: it is energy, emotion, life. Whatever I devise in terms of hue, saturation, and vibrancy must be met with a restraining force or structure, and I increasingly explore processes that set different qualities of color, pigment, and texture against each other. I do believe that beauty affects not only how we feel but how we behave. I think we’re hardwired to appreciate beauty in music, art and literature; we can learn sophisticated ways to approach beauty, but at the most basic level I think people respond to certain constructs found in nature as reflected in aesthetic fundamentals and classic tropes. As the daughter of an artist, I imbibed the principles of art making and great art at an early age, and yet I am constantly pulled in new directions rather than staying with one style or point of view. About the ArtistBarbara Mink was born in Buffalo, New York, started painting in 1998, and studied with Stan Taft, Bill Benson, and the late Bente King and Thomas Buechner. Her latest body of work in on unprimed canvas and linen, balancing exuberant color with a geometrical rigor.
“I grew up with art all around me. My father was an abstract painter, and Buffalo featured a wonderful modern art gallery and a lively arts scene. I started painting relatively late, and went through as many styles, subjects, and media as I could, before coming happily to rest in a world of the spare, the muted, and the geometric. Now I am back to color and texture, but incorporating some of the architectonic lines I love.” A Summa cum Laude graduate of SUNY Buffalo, she moved to Ithaca, New York in 1976 where she pursued a PhD in Comparative Literature, was a freelance actor in television and radio commercials, News Director of WHCU radio station, and received an MA degree in History from Cornell University in 1986. In 1989 Mink was elected to the Tompkins County Legislature and served for 12 years. In 2001 she founded the Light in Winter Festival of Science and Art. She has taught oral and written communication for MBAs at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management since 1986. Mink is an active member of the Greater Ithaca Art Trail, as well as the Buffalo Society of Artists and the Western New York Artists Group. She is represented by Art Matters Consultants in Washington, DC, Velvenoir Austria for European sales, and Indigo Art Consultants, London England. Her work can be found in collections in throughout the United States and Europe. |
