Barri Lucci

Barri Lucci
barrilu77@gmail.com
www.barrilucci.artcodeinc.com

Barri Lucci was born in Los Angeles, CA and earned MA in Studio Art Painting from California State University, Northridge. Her work is medium to large-scale text paintings in mixed media on paper, which are explorations of emotive states resulting from trauma. She explores the use of language through art especially as it is used to maintain psychological order in situations that are clearly chaotic and traumatic and experiments with the female voice within this context.

STATEMENT

“My Paintings are explorations of human relationships, specifically those in which traumas have occurred, both singular and recurring. My work references abstract expressionism viewed from a contemporary vantage point, combining gestural painting, spray paint, collage, and texts suggesting narrative content. The gestural and expressionistic aspects of my work are tropes for the chaos and emotive states caused by dysfunctional relationships. I am interested in the use of language as it is used to maintain psychological order resulting from traumatic experiences. Therefore I create themes within my work in which language and emotive painting is combined to represent these states using a narrative sensibility. The narratives tell stories of emotional events and I examine these events and elements of healing through each narrative’s exchange.

I am particularly interested in trauma that involves domestic abuse, including physical violence, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse, and how it may manifest itself in repetitive relationship patterns. These relationship choices may result in outcomes such as divorce, major betrayal, abuse and other forms of relationship dysfunction. Yet these patterns may also represent an attempt to heal by trying to get the relationship “right.” I explore the use of language through art especially as it is used to maintain psychological order in situations that are clearly chaotic. I am curious how order is established through language and process and experimenting with the female voice within this context.   

With all of this in mind, I create works using two approaches that convey traumatic events resulting from relationship dynamics. The first approach uses text in a narrative manner and represents the dramatic story as told through poems, journal police reports, emails, or stored text messages. The second approach infuses text into the paint as an abstract component, both legible and not. Both approaches suggest the act of remembering which may occur in a faulty manner or become completely repressed. The work I produce is a metaphor for the accumulation of wounding events that eventually becomes a chaotic miscellany of memory. Memories recalled from such events may manifest themselves in bits and pieces, and usually in ways too intense to process all at one time.

I share my personal experience through my work with the hope of edifying viewers about the emotional pain and consequent healing that traumatic events engender. Relationships are rife with the potential for physical and/or psychological wounding, but I examine these events from different vantage points. Personal growth is an unavoidable aspect of simply being alive, and the creative process, whether it is contemplating or creating an artwork, begins the process of healing.”

* None of the artworks may be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the Artist