Painting Faculty

Chris Barnard, Visiting Assistant Professor

cgbarnar@indiana.edu
Chris Barnard received a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and he has lived, worked and exhibited in New York and Los Angeles. His current body of work examines connections and gaps between landscape painting and contemporary socio-political concerns, specifically U.S. power and imperialism. The conceptual and formal content of his paintings reflects a broader interest in the relationship between how we are positioned (and position ourselves) and how we view the world. He believes “that we can never fully understand the world from any one viewpoint” (often symbolized in painting by the dominant one-point perspective), that our positions often determine—and distort—our views, and that we can begin to perceive and understand differently when we step outside a singular and static vantage point.

Chris has always been attracted to vast, silent spaces where natural and human-made landscapes meet—where, for example, power lines dot otherwise ‘empty’ stretches of the rural Southwest. He sees these landscapes as both awe-inspiring and depressing—a marvel of our industriousness, but also our manifest destiny. Like earlier works, recent paintings grow out of these landscapes, within which his attention has been increasingly drawn to the near omni-presence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Resulting works rarely include human figures, only signs of what we have done on or to the land; in this way, they can be interpreted as vistas of the present—or our current presence—or visions of the future and our absence.

Chris has taught studio art in a variety of settings with diverse students of wide-ranging abilities and levels of previous art exposure. These experiences have reinforced his belief that every person has important source material and a unique perspective to express through art.  Therefore, he believes that “it is everyone’s loss when art is a practice only for the privileged” and is motivated to teach visual arts in a way that welcomes all students.

To this end, Chris endeavors to develop students’ critical and technical faculties in tandem. He supports student mastery of materials, because he believes that mastery engenders confidence and enables—rather than inhibits—experimentation. He says, “I measure my success in part by the degree to which my students feel empowered to draw on, appropriate and adapt techniques for their own purposes.”

Tim Kennedy, Senior Lecturer

tkennedy@indiana.edu
Tim Kennedy received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Brooklyn College and he attended the Skowhegan School. Articles on his paintings have appeared in American Artist and Watercolor magazines. His most recent solo exhibition at First Street Gallery was reviewed by Maureen Mullarkey in the New York Sun. He has received Individual Artist Grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Indiana Arts Commission. In 2007 he received a Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis. He has had solo exhibitions at First Street Gallery in New York City and at the Ruschman Gallery in Indianapolis. Mr. Kennedy has taught at Indiana University since 2000.

“For several years my paintings have focused on domestic interiors and yard landscapes in and around our house in Bloomington. The people in the paintings are models, but their arrangement in the interior space loosely reflects my life here through events and situations that might actually occur. The real subject is the microcosm of the painting expressed by the texture of events in the world, color, form and light. My goal is to communicate something of the intimacy experienced in daily life.”

Eve Mansdorf, Associate Professor

emansdor@indiana.edu
Eve received a BS from Cornell University and a MFA in Painting from Brooklyn College in 1990. She exhibits her work at First Street Gallery in New York City. Her work can be seen on their web page and on studiomatters.com

“My primary interest has been in painting the human figure in an interior space. I have been grappling with the problems of combining an oversized format, traditionally the venue of public and heroic painting, with , instead, an emphasis on the private and domestic. I see the still lifes as very related to the figure paintings. Often many of the same objects exist in both. In my most recent still lifes I have been thinking about possessions and their legacy (having recently lost a parent). As in the figure paintings I would like the still lifes to be able to hold several levels of meaning. There is often a sense of pun to them and also a literary quality – I am seeking a painting equivalent for the way in which, in a novel, a characterization can be conveyed by how the surface of things is presented.”

Tina Newberry, Associate Professor

rfnewber@indiana.edu
Tina Newberry is a new addition to the Painting Faculty at IU. She comes here from Philadelphia where she has been living, painting and working for over 2 decades. Figuration and a straightforward interpretation of image have characterized her work since she began to paint and during her education. She continues to use herself as a prop to bear the burden of self-analysis and her general humanity. Various pop-psychology ideas and a small interest in lay science have also made contributions to the themes of her paintings. Lately an interest in the Military is adding to the metaphors Tina uses to discuss her issues. The accoutrements of war and the soldier, particularly from a romanticized war like the American Civil War are handy devices to layer ideas on the interiors and figures. Tina has been teaching upper and lower level drawing and painting students since 1988. The range of approach varies with the level of student. As a whole however, she is devoted to helping a student find his or her voice and bring it out to communicate. Whether that communication is brief or complicated, narrative or visceral what we see is what we get with painting. And that is our goal.

Caleb Weintraub, Assistant Professor

chweintr@indiana.edu
Caleb Weintraub is a failed calypso dancer, captain of two imaginary soccer teams and self-proclaimed “master of the fan brush”. He is known to be generally unhandy but boasts at his prowess at assembling his children’s toys. He claims to have incredible selective memory. As a high school actor he selectively remembered everyone else’s lines. He may have had a photographic memory up to and including the age of three which could help to explain his uncanny ability to rattle off astonishing lists of dinosaur names and dates with geographical information, page location and page numbers. He has no criminal record, owns no LP records and does not believe that the world is entirely round.

Weintraub tells us that his family plays a major role in his life, that he is a group project, a work in progress. He earned his MFA at University of Pennsylvania in 2003 and his BFA degree from Boston University. Recently, he has had solo shows at Jack the Pelican Presents in NY, Projects Gallery in Philadelphia and Peter Miller Gallery. Weintraub’s work will be featured alongside Ed Ruscha, Bill Viola and a number of other art luminaries in an upcoming book entitled “Signs of the Apocalypse or Rapture” to be distributed by University of Chicago Press in Fall 2008.

Barry Gealt, Professor Emeritus

gealt@indiana.edu
Barry Gealt earned his MFA (honors) from Yale in 1965, and has been teaching at Indiana University since 1969. He is the director of IU’s Studio overseas program, which offers art students programs of study in Florence, Italy. Professor Gealt recently finished some major work, Amerkanische Landschaften, which was displayed at the Gallery Osper in Cologne, Germany. He is also a gifted lecturer, having toured on such subjects as “The Nature of Landscape,” “The Hidden Nature of Indiana,” “To Take a Journey,” “On Artists’ Debts to Other Artists,” and “On Seven Women Artists.”

“When I first visited Etretat in the summer of 2003, I couldn’t believe that I was actually there. Such beauty, such power to the land and so much history. Etretat, nestled on the northern coast of Normandy, is a place of ancient conflicts, artistic mentors and wartime heroes. Artists have been drawn there to create incredible images for many decades. I never could have expected the effect it would have on me. How do you create works of art from a place so well known? How do you pay homage to your heroes? I have enjoyed that challenge for the past four years. These paintings reflect my memory of the changing temperature of light and weather and differing heights of the cliffs and being in the belly of the swell in the waves. I hope you can also feel the breezes of air and smell of the sea.”

Bonnie Sklarski, Professor Emeritus

sklarski@indiana.edu
Bonnie Sklarski heads the graduate painting program and has been an important part of the continuity and reputation of the painting program at Indiana University since 1970. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Brooklyn College. As an early post-modernist figurative artist, she has exhibited widely and was represented by Robert Schoelkopf Gallery NYC, the More Gallery Philadelphia, and currently by Heike Pickett Gallery Kentucky. Her expertise in anatomy for the artist and plein air landscape painting combined with an interest in metaphorical narrative defines her work and teaching.

Regarding art education, she has said, “When I left the world of illustration for academia, it was because the excitement of thinking and talking about Art was more important to me than money…and still is. If we continue to promote an attitude of Art as simple, visual perception, and problem-solving we lose the essence of Art which is to examine our humanity.” Professor Sklarski has been a full professor since 1983, and in 1998 was awarded the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.