Hi. I’m Nancy Barrie, an abstract mixed media artist, self-taught,  a zealous collagist. I moved to Sarasota from the Northeast eleven years ago, which is when my lifelong flirtation with art became devotion.

I’ve participated in several juried shows at the Art Center here and had two successful solo exhibitions in the area. In 2022 I was invited to be Artist in Residence at Art Ovation Hotel in Sarasota. My work hangs in several private collections here, as well as New York City, Seattle and Glen Burnie, Maryland. This summer, I’ll be represented at a gallery in Martha’s Vineyard.

I developed an affinity for art at an early age, watching my grandfather, a fine artist, at his easel. Thrilled by the spectrum of color, the spontaneity of subject, the satisfaction he derived, I knew some day I’d be an artist – if I could get beyond crayons.  

My first grade teacher said I had excellent scissor skills, which I took seriously, cutting up magazines and arranging images on scrapbook pages, configuring them in ways that told stories … stories that in retrospect only I understood.  I went on to create collages captioned by fanciful passages.  Enamored with the process, I acquired the notion I should write – which, as a dermatologist might say of a rash, “Leave it alone, don’t scratch; it’ll go away”. 

After attending the University of Miami, I settled in New York and entered the Writer’s Program at the New School for Social Research, as it was then called. Next, I went to the New York School of Interior Design (because a writer needs a day job) and pursued a quasi-career.

Upon the breakup of my first marriage, I embarked on a new venture wherein I designed and manufactured baby quilts, which I sold to high-end retailers.  Optimist that I was, I incorporated and named it Felicity, diving into a realm I knew little about. Net gain: six bolts of leftover gingham.

I moved to LA, enrolling in self-help and psychology courses at UCLA, immersing myself in spiritual/consciousness studies and further esoterica. I became a yoga/meditation aficionado.

I began work on a novel, a thinly veiled autobiography that morphed into memoir when I overcame fear of ‘first person’. A bold encounter… It was author-quest and writer’s block that triggered my return to visual art -- a kinder, gentler form of creativity, offering infinite possibility (my favorite word) in self-expression. Having read that artistic talent is genetic, I felt comfortably confident in this medium. Art is very ‘first person’, yet truly liberating.

I came to understand that art, especially collage, is a metaphor for memoir: It’s the act of ‘putting the pieces together’ -- the perhaps-revised fragments of experience.  Art is generous. I should have been doing this all along…