Barbara Pagh is a printmaker and papermaker who is a Professor Emerita of Art at the University of Rhode Island. Pagh is a founding member of the Printmakers’ Network of Southern New England. She has been a member of Hera Gallery in Wakefield, RI since 1985 and serves on the Board of Directors. Hera was founded in 1974 and is one of the earliest feminist cooperative galleries in the country.
She has exhibited at the Adams Gallery in Taegu, South Korea and was one of two artists from RI to participate in a national portfolio exchange, East/West. The portfolios were exhibited in several locations around the country including University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, Univ. of Wyoming, Visual Arts Gallery, Laramie, WY and UMass Dartmouth, New Bedford, MA. Pagh received her MA from New York University and her BA from Mount Holyoke College.
Statement: There are several themes that have appeared consistently in my work over the past 20 years that often diverge and intersect at various points. The most dominant theme has been landscape or the natural world including the American Southwest, coastal areas on both the eastern seaboard and the Pacific Northwest. There is no attempt to create a realistic representation of place, but a subjective impression based on structure and color and resulting in a layering of texture and form. The resulting images require you to look at the landscape in a different way; to look closely and focus on details that might otherwise go unnoticed. An ongoing research interest involves gallery installations interpreting the transformation of landscape by ancient cultures in the Scottish Highlands, Ireland and Brittany, combining printmaking, handmade paper and three-dimensional forms.
Printmaking allows me to experiment with the multiple in different ways by printing different colors and varying the combinations of images. I rarely make an edition, except for group portfolios. I usually start my process with making paper. I work with abaca and made sheets of various sizes. I photograph on site and then alter the photographs on the computer in Photoshop. From those prints I make negatives and expose them on a light sensitive aluminum lithographic plate. I save the plates and often re-use them in different ways.
Contact: bpagh@uri.edu
