BIO
Barbara Pagh is a printmaker and papermaker
who is a Full Professor in the Department
of Art and Art History at URI. Pagh’s
solo exhibition Passages was on view in
the Main Gallery at the University of Rhode
Island in 2009. In 1997 she exhibited at
Keimyung University in Taegu, South Korea.
Recent group exhibitions include Printmaking
Now at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery, Fall
River, MA; The Art of Printmaking at the
Spring Bull Gallery in Newport, RI; At Issue:
Prints and Social Commentary at the Beard
Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, MA; and
Against Tradition at Indiana State University,
Terre Haute, IN. Her work can be found in
corporate and private collections.
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, serves on the Board of Directors
and is currently Vice President. Pagh and
her husband Jeff Bertwell founded their
own printshop, Queen’s River Press,
in 1985. Pagh received her MA from New York
University and her BA from Mount Holyoke
College.
ARTIST 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
Rhode Island, the Scottish Highlands and
Ireland. 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. Images from the lithographic
series Coastlines and the Woodland Series
represent this aspect of my work. 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.
Passages was an installation that was inspired
by the megalithic structures that were erected
in ancient Ireland. It filled the gallery
space and invited the viewer to enter a
symbolic passage constructed with sheets
of printed handmade paper. It is part of
a series of exhibitions based on specific
sites where an ancient culture left its’
mark on the landscape. Stone Paper Circle
from 2002 is the first in this series and
was based on stone circles in northern Scotland
and the Orkneys.
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. Some of
the three dimensional forms are from flax.
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.
