Mummers Day I, 2009; colored pencil, watercolor, and dye on Twin Rocker Calligraphy Cream Paper. In Barnaby Furnas' lively suite of paintings at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, spectacle, pageantry, costuming and performance serve as the springboard for the artist's investigation into abstract patterning. Collectively titled "the lesser light" - taken from a Biblical reference to the moon--his work once again draws from familiar harbingers of the modern spectacular: pyrotechnic rock concerts, big budget action movies, carnivalesque street celebrations, and the theatrics of professional wrestling. The result is a mélange of color and contrast that at once celebrates and questions... Read More

Motörhead, 2009; colored pencil, golden acrylic with water-dispersed pigments on linen; 60 x 84 in. Through the paintings in "the lesser light," Barnaby Furnas examines the psychological effects of ecstatic public ritual from three perspectives: the performer, the spectacle, and the immersive group experience. In two intimate acrylic and colored pencil portraits, Furnas depicts KISS' drummer Peter Criss with half-closed eyes having a satisfied, post-show smoke, still in full make-up and costume, sticks in hand. It is painted with fastidious attention to chrome studs on leather and the backdrop of hot stage lights, but a more cursory treatment to... Read More