HEDWIG BARRY
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Hedwig Barry (b.1969, Bloemfontein) is a Cape Town-based painter and sculptor. Through her work, she investigates the relationships between perception and intuition, using scale, density and colour to create visual worlds as rich in their outward associations as they are in their internal complexity.
︎︎︎Full bio
Selected Paintings
2024 - 2026
My most recent work is about the relationship between perception, experience and a sense of place in the context of nature. Bodies of water melt into untamed vegetation; the earth floats up and the sky falls down. These paintings glance at the Western Romantic tradition, but are more enmeshed in the present climite crisis, as thought from a feminist perspective.
!["Interior with Exterior 2", 2026, oil on Belgian linen, 200 x 175 x 5 cm]()
!["Inmost Bower", 2026, oil on Belgian linen, 190 x 160 x 5 cm]()
!["To the East, To the South, To the North, To the West", 2025, oil on canvas, 187 x 342 x 7.5 cm]()
!["First Sight", 2025, oil on canvas mounted on board, 122 x 244 x 7.5 cm]()
!["Perceptual Span I: Tracking", 2024, oil on canvas, 160 x 146 cm]()
!["Perceptual Span 2: Focal Area", 2024, oil on canvas, 175 x 140 cm]()
!["The Covenant of Water", 2024, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm]()
!["Daypath", 2024, oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm]()
!["At a Walking Pace", 2024, oil on canvas, 45 x 60 cm]()
!["Embracing The Dark Little Room Making It Richer In Colour (Verdaccio)", 2024, oil and pigment on canvas, 80 x 60 cm]()
2022-2023
During 2022 and 2023 I spent several months working from the small coastal town of Onrus, near the southern tip of Africa. The paintings made in this period were a way of mapping and countermapping my surroundings, looking for ways to understand the very particular and intense light there, the wildness of the ocean, and the solitude of my experience. I used the direct English translation of Onrus – “unrest” – as a basis for thinking about different kinds of restlessness, both in nature and in ourselves.
!["To the East", 2023, oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm]()
!["To the West", 2023, oil on canvas, 122 x 153 cm]()
!["Hokusai's Octopi", 2023, oil on canvas panel,61 x 46 cm]()
!["All at Once", 2023, oil on canvas panel, 61 x 46 cm]()
!["Ember", 2023, oil on canvas, 25,5 x 20 cm]()
!["Fusion", 2023, oil on canvas, 30,5 x 23 cm]()
!["Home is where the heart is (my own hallowed ground)", 2022, oil on linen, 50.8 x 30.5 cm]()
!["Home is where the heart is (Dalrymple spring)", 2022, oil on linen, 50.8 x 30.5 cm]()
!["Masked Weavers", 2022, oil on linen, 51 x 41 cm]()
2020-2021
Following my MA in Fine Art at Wits University, my painting practice was oriented around colour research, exploring how colour can be used in painting to articulate the relationship between figure and ground. I was curious about the possibility of figureless ground, and how the very notion of ground disappears without the ‘figure’. At this time I began to focus the idea of groundlessness, which had emerged as an important motif in my work during my MA.
![Hedwig Barry, "Johannesburg", 2021, automotive and oil paint on previously used canvas, 220 x 100 x 7 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, "Tswalu", 2021, automotive and oil paint on previously used canvas, 160 x 130 x 7 cm,]()
![Hedwig Barry, "Marievale", 2021, automotive and oil paint on previously used canvas, 160 x 130 x 7 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, "Makuleke", 2021, automotive and oil paint on previously used canvas, 220 x 160 x 7 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, "Waiting for the Yellow", 2021, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, " Palimpsest II, Schlumbergera", 2021, glue, glitter, enamel and oil paint on previously used canvas, 50 x 50 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, "Hiding the Blues II, Rory's Shark", 2021, oil and enamel paint, glitter and glue on canvas, 93 x 63 cm]()
![Hedwig Barry, "The more you look the more you see", 2020, oil on canvas, 42 x 30 cm]()
!["Reaching the Unattainable, or It All Matters", 2020, oil on canvas, 36 x 27 cm]()
2024 - 2026
My most recent work is about the relationship between perception, experience and a sense of place in the context of nature. Bodies of water melt into untamed vegetation; the earth floats up and the sky falls down. These paintings glance at the Western Romantic tradition, but are more enmeshed in the present climite crisis, as thought from a feminist perspective.
2022-2023
During 2022 and 2023 I spent several months working from the small coastal town of Onrus, near the southern tip of Africa. The paintings made in this period were a way of mapping and countermapping my surroundings, looking for ways to understand the very particular and intense light there, the wildness of the ocean, and the solitude of my experience. I used the direct English translation of Onrus – “unrest” – as a basis for thinking about different kinds of restlessness, both in nature and in ourselves.
2020-2021
Following my MA in Fine Art at Wits University, my painting practice was oriented around colour research, exploring how colour can be used in painting to articulate the relationship between figure and ground. I was curious about the possibility of figureless ground, and how the very notion of ground disappears without the ‘figure’. At this time I began to focus the idea of groundlessness, which had emerged as an important motif in my work during my MA.
