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Inspired by messages in nature, local artist, Laurie Barmore tells her truth through art. Barmore is an award-winning painter and member of the local Valle del Sur Art Guild. She travels from her home in Gilroy to her part-time job at Valley Medical Center in San Jose, where she has worked as a nurse for 28 years—first in critical care and now in recovery. For Barmore, painting in the abstract with acrylics on canvas permits her to express what words often cannot.
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With the precision and dedication required for nursing, Barmore describes how her work affects her art. “It really kind of focuses you on that part of life that you can’t control. Getting older, that becomes more in your face. I’ve just learned that you can’t hold too tightly onto anything, so I think that’s more reflective in my art work.”
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In an artist’s statement, Barmore shares that she is most captivated by the stories told through the forms and lines found in nature, “the way, for example, peeling bark tells me not merely about the tree or the nature of the bark, but also about revelation, truth-telling and transparency.”
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Her journey in art began about 20 years ago when her youngest child was entering kindergarten and she enrolled in art classes at Gavilan College. Barmore began showing her work in an annual city-sponsored show Gilroy held for local artists. “Through that time my work has really evolved. I went from painting semi-representational to really abstract,” she says.
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For Laurie Barmore, her designs reflect a collective consciousness that transcends our most basic of human experiences. The artist writes that she believes “the physical world provides a window into wisdom, understanding and truth.” It is through this meeting of the physical and spiritual worlds that her designs come to life in the abstract. Of her art, Barmore says, “abstraction removes the predictability of what I already know so I might discover the unexpected.”
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Asked about inspiration and the planning that goes into her work, Barmore says, “I definitely have a strong spiritual faith. So, putting all of those things together, I sort of found that certain things that interest me, I could put them into my art and kind of draw metaphors. So I just started expanding on that. If there is something I read that touches or moves me or an experience in life, or something that somebody says to me, I’ll take that and go a little deeper. It’s not like I picture a certain idea, but that’s kind of what happens.”
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Barmore admits she doesn’t plan a series in advance. Recently inspired by a wellspring, for instance, Barmore says she “just started doing different paintings with that idea in mind. A series in a way, but they don’t necessarily look the same.”
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“The blaze of knowing,” was a piece inspired by a book she was reading. Barmore says she was was moved by the author who was talking about “that moment where you just know something. That inner knowing.”
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Barmore takes a fluid approach to her art “I’m always pushing myself toward a looser way of painting and stuff happens, and when stuff happens, I work with that.”
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“I might start out with an idea and then I arrange it in a certain way,” she says regarding how each piece and each layer in her work gradually reveals itself. “Generally I work very intuitively, and then I pick the colors I want to use. And then I just start working with it and so it evolves. Basically, the first paint I put on might start with a design or direction and then I work from there and it changes.”
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Asked about her perspective on life or how she interprets life experience, she says her art “has changed a lot in my life, but I don’t know if I can necessarily say it’s because of my art or my art reflects those changes that had already been happening.” Barmore adds, “I’m always looking for that connection where nature reflects realities about human beings and interactions and how we live in the world. I’m always looking to make those ‘this is like that’ or ‘this shows us that this over here is true.’”
Barmore’s work has been featured in local establishments in and around the South Valley. For more information about Laurie Barmore or the Valle de Sur Art Guild go to lauriebarmore.com or valledelsur.org.
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I’m always looking for that connection where nature reflects realities about human beings and interactions and how we live in the world.
