ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Newbury, VT, Julia Whiney Barnes spent two decades in Brooklyn/NYC before moving to the Hudson Valley in 2015. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from Hunter College. Whitney Barnes works in a variety of media from cyanotypes, watercolor, combined media works on paper, oil paintings, glass, ceramic sculptures, murals, site-specific installations, and limited-edition prints. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally including the Albany International Airport /Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, New York; Dorksy Museum, New Paltz, NY; Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; Hancock Shaker Museum, Berkshires, MA; Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (WAAM), Woodstock, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY; Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent, CT; Garvey|Simon NY, New York, NY and Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne, Germany. Her work is in numerous private and public collections.

Whitney Barnes is the recipient of fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Arts Mid-Hudson, Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Gowanus Public Art Initiative, among others. She completed two significant commissions in 2024 including an immersive double sided glass artwork for Public Art for Public Schools/NYC Percent for Art in Brooklyn, NY and a room-wide mural for the new Vassar College Institute in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2024.

Artist’s Statement

In these works on paper, I approach each growing thing with equal importance regardless of whether it is a weed, rare species, wildflower, or cultivar. Most works have several species fused into one composition, often to the point where the exact plants depicted are open to interpretation. Each composition starts as a unique blue and white cyanotype printed onto watercolor paper and then I paint in many layers of color pigment. I am most interested in creating objects that feel both beautiful and mysterious. I want each cyanotype painting to be familiar yet slightly outside of time.

Cyanotype is a camera-less photographic printing process invented in 1842 by scientist and astronomer, Sir John Herschel, which produces a cyan-blue print when a non-toxic chemistry-coated surface is exposed to sunlight. The second person and first artist/botanist to make cyanotypes was Anna Atkins and she learned the technique directly from Herschel. She is cited as the very first female photographer, though made without the use of a camera, and her family was friends with William Henry Fox Talbot (credited with inventing photography) and Atkins learned techniques from him and then made her own path. She published the first photographic book, Photographs of British Algae, in 1843.

Through my use of the cyanotype medium, I manipulate physical impressions of plants grown locally in my Hudson Valley garden and other nearby areas, along with intricately cutout photographic negatives. Each selected flower is preserved through a pressing process in which I dissect and shape each form—akin to a specimen from a natural history museum—and then lay everything out in massive flat files in my attic studio. There is a directness to the link between botany and the cyanotype photogram technique because of the physical plant leaving its mark. Given that sunlight starts the exposure process with cyanotype chemistry, I carefully arrange elaborate compositions at night and utilize long exposures under natural or UV light to create the final prints. Once the unique cyan imagery is fused, I meticulously paint the exposed watercolor paper with multiple layers of watercolor, ink and gouache. Each cyanotype is created by the power of light, inspiring viewers to look at these very recognizable images in new and different ways.

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