Relic: Hourglasses, 2023

Michael Barringer  

American abstract artist Michael Barringer creates highly crafted and detailed, lyrical abstract paintings rooted in metaphysical introspection, expansive life experiences, and meditative mind spaces. His work is layered and nuanced, and rewards prolonged looking.

Barringer strictly paints during the day, using the natural light in his studio. Although the initial inspiration for a painting might come from a fleeting experience with music, nature, or a memory, Barringer methodically crafts his compositions over an extended period of time. Putting a premium on craftsmanship, he builds his surfaces up carefully by layering a variety of mediums, including acrylics, modelling paste, charcoal, graphite and pastels, stacking areas of pure color atop gestural brush marks and geometric forms. The elements come together almost like a quilt, yet the contrasts between the translucent and opaque layers creates an illusion of endless space, inviting viewers to contemplate the accumulation of time, evoking memories, hidden histories, and future feelings.

“It ALL seeps in," Barringer says describing his many influences, which include poets, novelists, jazz music, the quilts of Gee's Bend, photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, ancient cave art, and the natural forms he has encountered while walking through nature or traveling to such places as the Alaskan wilderness and the California redwood forests. Each of these encounters connects him to what he calls a “larger existence," raising questions about how the multitudinous aspects of human perception and the natural world fit together, and what drives humans to seek out a relationship with spirit. His paintings are both a response to such experiences and questions, as well as entry points for viewers into their intuitive, introspective, and revelatory encounters.

His work is included in many prominent collections, including that of Walt Disney, Georgia Institute of Technology, Ritz Carlton Hotel, IBM Corporation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Warner/Fidelity investments, among many others.