Artist Statement
After spending more than 30 years working in the film industry, Laurence Barbera found himself searching for a new creative outlet. After being exposed to the works of Lucian Freud, Egon Schiele, and Alyssa Monks, just to name a few, that search kindled his desire of become an artist and drew him into the fascinating world of painting the human figure.
Even though largely self-taught, painting has given Laurence a new and unique voice. More than any other medium he knows, oil paints can create many amazingly different styles that can transcend all other art forms.
Laurence paints using brushes or palette knives in oil paint with vivid, contemporary colors to capture a model’s many abstract angles, shadows, and textures. He paints mainly nude figure studies that can be large and uncompromising or small and delicate. Laurence’s figures sometimes have a quiet, straight-forward pose that may make some viewers glance away, while others find themselves drawn even closer into his painting’s orbit.
“Man’s naked form…belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages” –Auguste Rodin