Sharon Barnes, Improvisations of a Polyrhythmic Being

The Space of Time Danced Through (Improvisations of a Polyrhythmic Being)’ is a series that gleans from ways that Black music – not only in its form, but in the way it has often functioned as a psychological and metaphysical mechanism for managing both the pain and joy in life, producing the distinctly American art forms of blues, field hollers, gospel, jazz, party music, and protest songs.” 

– Sharon Barnes

Sharon Barnes understands the seminal power abstraction delivers. Her visual and poetic expression emerged from her decades-long evolution in thinking and working within interiority, the liminal space that is abstract thinking. The ‘figure’ of the painting is Barnes' implied embodiment of Black history and culture within an abstract form. She expresses this conceptual accommodation so deftly: I’m using the open-ended languages of abstraction alongside the poetic resonance of process and materials so I can point to, without literally depicting, the layered complexities surrounding identity, culture, and Black lived experience. I frequently infuse my works with culturally reverberant materials. Black-eyed peas, sweet tea, quotidian items, and other such materials, as they find their way into the physical and conceptual layers of my work.

Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Barnes’ large-scale painting, Music is What We Make in Music’s Absence is currently installed in the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia and her 40-foot wide vitrine installation, Replotted Paths & Replanted Gardens in the Tom Bradley International Terminal of the Los Angeles Airport (LAX), has been extended through July, 2025.