My art focus for the last few months has been intense on Flight, Fight, Freedom/Fences and Burnt Offerings.

 “Burnt Offerings” being a theme which I have been exploring for many months, in collaboration with dear Johnson Zuze, as he and I discussed the idea of a co-exhibition called “Burnt Offerings” after realizing the fact of our mutually experienced house fires, losses and re-inventions….

A Phoenix installation from many years ago which i rescued from my house fire, waiting to be re-invented…

This below  is one of the burnt wooden bird sculptures which  I rescued from my own house fire, which I gave to Johnson to re-invent…a phoenix rising from the ashes, a ‘burnt offering”… we liked the idea of “re-inventing”, “resurrecting” it…….. much like a phoenix.

Lin, Burnt Bird:

“Freedom” is so inspiring, a natural progression of thought reflecting my feelings of re-invention, taking flight, to combat boundaries real and perceived….

….to combat the trauma of life, fire, physical and emotional battles and constraints….

Freedom

is an elusive state

constrained

not only by physical boundaries

but by your mind…

Lin Barrie

Freedom and Fences- a theme personified by the iconic deadwoods that were historically the boundaries for cattle paddocks and dips, during the rise of subsidized cattle ranching which took over vast areas of traditional wildlife areas, and before the replacement of these very posts to again make way for wildlife….. boundaries and land use, flux and flow, freedom and restraint……..

Fire is the only threat to these ‘indestructible’ lead woods, a devastating force,

Fire, harnessed by man but often overcoming man as well… as in my story of how a Giant Snail Shell was put to use to obtain fire, by the Mahenye People …

I like to harness the force of fire in making my own charcoal for sketches….

Painting Shells, Fire, Painting Water, are elemental satisfactions for me…

Lin Barrie, “Water…”, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 180 cm 

Lin Barrie, “Fire…”, acrylic on canvas , 120 x 180 cm, 

the elemental power of fire will always draw me……….

Lin Barrie, What I Saw in the Fire, quartet,acrylic on stretched canvas-each 30 x 30 cm

and I ruminate on the force of fire, as a cleansing and as a destructor…

I have draped a large canvas, reminiscent of what I see when I stare into fire, into flames, whereupon I take flight or contemplate fight……..

Lin Barrie, Fire; Fight or Flight?, acrylic on draped  canvas Height 184 cm Width 275 cm Width to point 435 cm

 The “Winged Victory”, that stunning  hellenic statue of Nike, Goddess of Victory, is the epitome of freedom, of rising to victory….

Winged Victory, Nike I, and II, are acrylic and charcoal on stretched canvas, each 42 x 30 cm (A3)

Taking flight, my abstraction of that universal Swoosh symbol, the Nike flash, Winged Victory, Nike, a diptych, is acrylic on stretched canvas, each 42 x 30 cm …… is it a bird in flight or a swoosh?! …..either way it is a symbol of FREEDOM!

Born of Fire, my painting “Winged Victory” is growing…acrylic/charcoal on stretched canvas 4 x 3 feet….

Winged Victory; Beyond Beyonce, will be an acrylic/charcoal/collage installation on stretched/draped  canvas inspired by the marks of sparks and fire on canvas, creativity and creation… Size 4 x 3 feet plus ‘wings’

watch this space…..

The Winged Victory; Flight, Fight and Freedom