Barbara Jo Kingsley

My current charcoal and pastel drawings depict starkly rendered, surreal human forms floating in pitch black, or sometimes intense, orange voids of endless, ethereal space. In some pictures these pinkish, headless beings poke and jab at each other in antagonistic or humorous posturing. Sometimes they form an amorphous pile of orgasmic shapes. At other times they seem to form a single being, full of tension and confusion as it struggles within itself. Some of these surreal creatures crawl along like heavy mountains of body parts, burdened with their existence in a barren landscape. I draw spontaneously and intuitively with a model, developing these creatures as the model changes positions, creating the unexpected and humorous tensions that reflect the struggles and confusion of humanity. I then work on these sketches, shading in the figures, which become three-dimensional on flat backgrounds. As I work, I am constantly aware that as a species of incredible intelligence, we blunder along like headless creatures, blinded by our immediate concerns, and oblivious to impending threats to our earthly existence.