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Will Barnet
American, born 1911 Painter and printmaker Will Barnet decided early to be an artist. As a boy in Beverly, Massachusetts, where he was born, he spent hours sketching and poring over art books at the local library. The family cellar became his first studio. After studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Barnet left for the Art Students League in New York in 1930 and concentrated on lithography. He taught and produced art in New York for more than sixty years, spending summers in Maine from the mid-1950s. Barnet's works focus primarily on the human figure. The family,
especially his own, has been an
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enduring
subject for him. Yet his images are not descriptions of individuals
but careful arrangements of forms that express moods and feelings.
Barnet balances shapes to create strong, interlocking compositions,
as is evident in his many prints.
To arrive
at the arrangement that best conveys the mood he desires, Barnet has
made many preparatory drawings. The drawing No. 1 Idea for
"Waiting" was created in the 1970s, when Barnet began a series
of paintings of women waiting and looking out to the distance. Some
scholars have related these images to Barnet's childhood in Beverly,
once a whaling town, where sea captains' wives watched the horizon
for signs of their husbands' return. Barnet's women belong to no
particular place or time but seem to stand for the solitude and
strength of the
human
soul as it is tested by life.
