The Art of Barbara Agreste

All posts and news about Barbara Agreste’s Art.

Geremiah

geremiah-child-face-oil-painting-on-canvas-art-barbara-agreste

oil on canvas
100 x 85  cm
2011

Geremiah

Geremiah. This particular face belongs to my son Geremiah when he was a child. He has now grown into a beautiful adult, and I thank the Gods for it, but the only things that remain to me, to remind me of his childhood and the lovely appearance of his angelic face of innocence, is in two paintings I made of him: this one (oil on canvas) titled “Geremiah”, and another

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Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci, Barbara Agreste writes about Leonardo's art.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci ‘s art is something very precious to me. I could not do without one of his images (a drawing, a painting) here on my blog, is it because artists care for other artists? Is it because I wanted to look at such brilliant master of the past in the hope that I would learn something magic from his work?

 

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Blue Mermaid

Blue Mermaid Drawing, pastels on acid free paper by Barbara Agreste.

Pastels on
acid free paper

24 x 35 cm

Blue Mermaid

A mermaid (Blue Mermaid) is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide.

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Dark Pop Surrealism

 

Dark Pop Surrealism

 

Dark Pop Surrealism Blood

Dark Pop Surrealism

Dolls are surreal, dark and today they have come to represent perfect, endless, but also lifeless beauty. I must also add “voiceless beauty” too, since a doll doesn’t speak. I have used dolls several times in my images in the attempt to emphasize the fact that a woman in many situations is seen and treated as a doll. But, if a doll is voiceless, would images of dolls speak any sort of truth about them?

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Nigredo Blackness

Nigredo Blackness is a digital painting conveying the alchemical stage of blackness and putrefaction...

 

Nigredo Blackness

The Catharsis of Ophelia

 

Nigredo Blackness. Today I looked at some of my digital paintings from the Nigredo series, and I found out that many of them were left unfinished. I was especially interested in one of those images, the one that best represents the Nigredo phase, one that has actually a lot of black matter in it, an almost entirely black and white piece.

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The Femail Project

The Femail project is a group exhibition exploring contemporary feminism on a Global scale.

The Femail Project

The Femail project is a group exhibition exploring contemporary feminism on a Global scale.
Curator, Emma Leppington, created an international open call aimed at women artists and Feminist artists from around the world to send a copy of their work to the project. The work had to explore such ideas as the woman, Feminism, and the role and stance of women today.
The work also had to have been made since the year 2000.

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Babel Tower Story

The Tower of Babel

Babel Tower Story, mixed media painting of a futuristic Tower of Babel.

Barbel Tower Story

The Tower of Babel is an interesting subject from my point of view. It was reported in the Bible (Genesis 11:1-9), and it tells the story of humans that once upon a time all spoke the same language on earth. As people migrated from the east, they settled in a land called Shinar which in the Bible appears eight times and it refers to Babylonia, a territory encompassing both the city of Baylon (Babel) and the southern city Erech. Babylonia used to be a great and powerful empire.

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Art needed: when we need it, and what it does to the image of ourselves.

art needed Barbara Agreste Nedusa Self Portrait

ART NEEDED

When Art is needed, and when it’s not.

Art needed me, I needed art.

Again on art; this time I have pondered about what made me, in my past, need art so much, and I have finally, after having stopped for a while producing forms, found the answer: I have never existed at peace and harmony with myself since when I was born, because of the influence of a narcissistic parent with a pathology so hard to identify, and so insidious, Continue reading

Poisoned Ivy

About Barbara Agreste

Poisoned ivy - About Barbara Agreste - Ophelia Blood Lake - A painting from "The Catharsis of Ophelia" series.

Poisoned Ivy

 

Barbara Agreste, post surrealist artist, her artwork takes the viewer into a dreamy world full of tricky tiles, falling flowers, and sharp shards.
She blends poisoned ivy to the image of Ophelia, showcasing a doll as the best example of her strange way of conceiving beauty: never flaunting, discreet and androgynous, part of a concealed world immersed in thriving nature and cold swamps, a fragile universe of subtle ethereal pain and melancholic moods.

Barbara Agreste disseminates fallen petals, disconnected shiny leaves, and fragments of mirror along impervious paths, leading the viewer of her video art, and short films to a journey characterized by the instability of walls and floors, and by the dazing alternating colours of unsteady tiles. There is always danger in these adventures, uncanny places of hidden eyes, or architectures built with the special purpose of causing accidents to the passengers. It is nature the tricky environment, full of leaves and blood, but this natural lanscape is also magnified and remoulded: it is not a totally true vegetation that we see, but rather a genetiacally modified one, a distorted natural proliferation, reminiscent of the cinematic settings, assembled like a labirinth hiding too many things, leading to a previously arranged scene.

Never trust your eyes.

poisoned-ivy

Poisoned Ivy

About Barbara Agreste

Rain Blood

Rain Blood - endless raining from the sky, this film has red tears dropping all over the agonising vegetation.

Rain Blood

This is a film frame from Rain, the short film by Barbara Agreste. This particular frame shows the shot in which some multicolored leaves fall from the sky, and their branches are violently shaken by a mysterious and frenetic wind. This wind seems to be upset, like if it was sent from a angry God wanting to punish humans for having misbehaved, or mistreated the Earth.

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Fairy Doll


Oil painting of a doll as Fairy, from the Ophelia series by Barbara Agreste.

Fairy Doll (Ophelia Series)
90 x90 cm
Oil on canvas

Fairy Doll

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Video Art Reptilica animation