“Plant Forms” by Barbara Shafer

Barbara Shafer is a painter and dancer.  Her creative work combines these two passions. She and her husband’s painting studio and the dance studio she shares, are in Building 13, Banbury.

"Until a few years ago, the only subjects of Barbara’s paintings were dancers, the result of her interest and involvement in both the visual arts and modern dance and her early experiences as a sculptor.  Three-dimensional form, energy, spatial relationships, movement, and a response to the internal forces of rock formations and their organic surfaces, always were her inspiration.  Her paintings, as her sculpture, build layer upon layer upon layer, searching for form and compositional relationships, proportions, the edge, and the emotional character of each subject. A few years ago Barbara became intrigued with dried plants, and working from them permitted her to use her drawing and paint surfaces more expressively and inspired a more abstract and painterly approach.” – The Artist