Stem in Black #1 (Abstract Painting), 2018

Robert Baribeau  

Robert Baribeau is an American abstract painter whose dynamic and sumptuous paintings express the visceral relationship between the act of painting and the processes of the natural world. Baribeau has long been at the forefront of exploring the influence of landscape on contemporary abstraction. He lives and works in Stanfordville, New York. Baribeau received his bachelor's degree from Portland State University in 1978 and his master's degree in fine arts from Pratt Institute in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Pratt Institute Art Department and the Florence Saltzman-Heidel Foundation. Baribeau has exhibited his work in numerous galleries across the United States. His works are in several institutional collections, including those of the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co, New York, NY, ABC Inc, New York, NY, and Bank of America Securities, San Francisco, Boston and New York. Baribeau builds his paintings layer by layer, constructing colors, shapes and textures in viscous and impasto compositions, on supports that are themselves often thick, even sculptural. He scratches and scribbles across his surfaces, infusing a visceral emotion and energy into the work. His imagery is so layered and dimensional that even his works on paper convey a sense of texture and depth.