Leigh Barbier

Leigh Barbier gives complicated feelings bodies of their own. Her paintings and sculptural figures are funny, unsettling and unexpectedly tender, drawing on a childhood shaped by religious imagery, 1960s Disney, Thomas Hart Benton and the Mexican muralists. Years of model making and digital painting for film sharpened her ability to invent forms with character and physical presence. Her work has also extended into museum dioramas and collaborations with the experimental band The Residents. In her personal art, that experience serves a more intimate purpose. Faces split, limbs wander and familiar objects become strange, allowing affection, anxiety and absurdity to occupy the same scene. Barbier’s worlds ask us to recognize a feeling before we can quite name the creature carrying it.