April 19 - July 9, 2022

Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new abstract paintings by Barbara Sternberger. In this body of work titled Emanating, Sternberger embraces the constancy of change and each artwork contains the energetic record of their creation. The artist covers up the previous layers of her marks, obscuring any marks that she considers predetermined aesthetic decisions in favor of the pure expression that resulted from being intensely immersed in the present moment of their making.

Gestural thick lines float amid multi-layered surfaces and appear to simultaneously advance and retreat, grounded by an earthbound color palette of burnt oranges, vibrant ochres and deep blues. The canvases hold accumulations of imagery and the artist’s gestural smudges and marks from previous layers are only faintly legible. These works each read like a palimpsest, a manuscript on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing, bearing visible traces of its earlier form. Sternberger continues to record intuitive, energetic moments of time through paint while the canvas acts as a conduit for emanating it back out into the world.

Barbara Sternberger received her MFA from the University of California at Irvine. She lives in Bellingham, Washington and is a part-time lecturer and painting instructor at Western Washington University.

She has exhibited both regionally and nationally, and her paintings are included in numerous private and public collections. Sternberger has presented nine solo exhibitions to date with Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR. Her paintings have been the subject of two solo museum exhibitions: at the Museum of Northwest Art, and at the Whatcom Museum.  Her work has been featured in group exhibitions including Curator's Perspective (Whatcom Museum of Art, 2015); Elles (Seattle Art Museum Gallery, 2012); Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists 1880 - 2010 (Whatcom Museum of Art, 2010); and the U.S. Art in Embassies Program (US State Department). In 2010 she was the  Betty Bowen Awards, Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award Winner.