Parisian artist Marie Anne Baron’s expressionist paintings have the qualities of distant memories half remembered. Many of her pieces start from an old photograph, a fragment of the past that takes on new life. She applies her bold palette of acrylic paints in layers, then washes her compositions so that pictures bleed and dissolve, and previously concealed layers re-emerge. Some coalesce into figurative images — flowers and silhouettes are recurring motifs in Baron’s paintings — while others progress towards total abstraction.
In addition to these visual experiments, Baron creates incredibly rich textural experiences. Many feature collage elements, while in others the paints are built up so thick that they take on sculptural qualities. These surface variations often work in league with the canvases’ visual elements, adding dimensionality to a painterly shape, or creating a bas-relief that echoes a feature in the composition. This provides a through-line bridging radical shifts in color, texture, scale and subject matter. Baron’s inventive expressionism leads viewers towards unexpected discoveries.