'The Abduction'

Artist

Tiffany Barber

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Tiffany is a contemporary figurative artist based in Brighton. The artworks encourage us to appreciate the power and beauty of the figurative masterpieces represented in the paintings and simultaneously builds a connecting bridge between the old and the new. The powerful & dramatized sculptural stances are purposely being combined with what is now considered today’s ‘mundane’ objects.

Born in Scotland she was raised as an athlete in competitive swimming but from a very early age longed to be an artist, spending any time outside of training and school creating. The disciplined nature of her upbringing is reflecting in the meticulously detailed artworks she now creates. The love of art led her to spending four years studying painting at Edinburgh College of Art with a term of this time spent at the Hungarian University of Fine Art. The time in Hungary sparked the fascination for classical architecture and sculpture which she found herself surrounded by. You can see hints of this in previous series through the figurative compositions wrapped and draped in fabrics.

Forever being drawn to renaissance and classical art, Tiffany appreciates when these artworks can imitate or hint at various circumstances we are faced with today. This fascination has been the propeller for the oil paintings in her recent ‘Quarantine’ series which has evolved into a collection of artworks focusing on fusing classism with contemporary in order to provoke a dialogue concerning current social or political issues. These concepts are taken further by changing the natural setting and composition of the classical sculptures and placing them onto backgrounds which appear as though they are floating into the abyss. Projecting an edge of ambiguity and forcing an array of emotions alongside them.

The Sculptures are meticulously chosen subject to their concepts, their mythology and their tableaux’s in order to sympathize with contemporary issues. The artist is challenging the positioning and placement of sculpture by translating them onto 2D surfaces lost in the empty stylised backgrounds and then placed in unfamiliar settings, such as the home. This makes these untouchable sculptures accessible to us, they are often out of reach, hidden away behind the thick concrete barriers of the museum walls. In today’s society it has been made more and more difficult to visit these sculptural masterpieces in the flesh especially with travel restrictions put in place due to the first pandemic of the 21st century.

Tiffany continues to create oil paintings in relation to the ever-changing experiences the world is faced with. Future paintings will be in keeping with the style of the most recent ‘Quarantine’ series with different twists and turns on the way. The worlds will birth many more issues and with that, the paintings will never seize to halt.

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