Biography
Barry Gross Artistic Statement
Who really is the Creator? In the Quest for who we are and why we're here, I have confronted myself and consequently retrained myself to be more positive, while experiencing the outer world of mankind, the self, and moving inward toward the spirit.
The imagery and intimacy I capture on canvas emanates from passions in dreams and visions. Sleep, meditation, and acknowledgment of the human condition permeates these acquisitions. I do not think that it all comes from the self. There is a higher power at work. Creating a powerful image, expressing inner and outer qualities in relationship with spirit, psyche, and myth lays the foundation of a strong representational piece of art.
The creation is also empowered with technique-the use of paint, the consistency of oils which seems to flow through the body to the brush, the powers of space, shape, form and color. The amazing conclusion is how the public interacts with the work through many emotions, whether spiritual inspiration, humor, drama, anger, or sensuality. It seems that the viewer becomes reflective and inherits a deeper access to the canvas, becoming more involved with its theme. Again, who really is the creator? The universe, the artist, people or the essence of all these energies intertwined? Imagination: The passage through the unknown.
Bio
Day by day, as we approach the beginning of a new era, we are constantly reminded of the immutable facts of change and the power of time. At this particular point in history we are called upon to evaluate the progress of human kind, assess our common goals, affirm our personal beliefs, and anticipate the inevitable.
The paintings of Barry Gross are timely indications of our current period of spiritual wonderings and temporal questioning. Barry paints visions, dreams, and distant memories, peopled with beautifully articulated figures.
His work, which is spatially and iconographically complex, invites the viewer to solve the riddles of time and place, to attempt to determine the state of consciousness, and to establish the contextual and stylistic heritage. His emphasis on the placement of precisely rendered human forms within mystic landscapes provides the viewer a space of personal contemplation and reverie.
In art historical terms, the early works of Barry Gross combine the hyperfocus of Surrealism with Renaissance spirituality and humanism which is then all set to motion with the dynamism and drama of Baroque. Dali and Fra Angelico join forces with Bernini. His paintings reveal to the viewer something deeply felt, yet only vaguely remembered. This dichotomy of reality and fantasy is matched in other works in which his protagonists are captured in a never-never land between sleep and awakening, or caught between the depths of the ocean and the limits of outer space.
His current works explore the theme of isolation and loneliness. The pathos of detachment from those around us strikes a chord all too familiar in our growing encapsulation of the individual. We are so often connected electronically, yet separated by technology from personal, tactile interaction. Barry's works are studies in contrast between reality and fiction, between traditions present and past, between this world and the next. They are caught, as are we, in the reality of the present while we await the unknowns of tomorrow.