Barbara Swanson Sherman

Biography

Barbara Swanson Sherman, a native New Yorker, began drawing at an early age and never stopped. Spending the last two years of high school in northern Vermont opened her eyes to the natural world and the small visual nuances within it. 

A gift of a Koh-i-Noor drafting pen led to a fascination, rather an obsession, with fine detail.  Moving back to Manhattan after college she found the Art Students League where she studied etching with Roberto De Lamonica, Michael Ponce de Leon, and Robert Blackburn.  

Later on, Sherman extended her practice to writing as well. Today, she writes a weekly blog on art and autobiography. Since 2008, Sherman has been the director of Art At First, NYC.

Artist statement

I am an artist and a writer seeking the sublime in the everyday. At the age of four when I climbed up on the sofa to get a closer look at the lady in the painting, I was appalled to find she was just a blob of paint. I wanted so much more. Sensing there was more to see I wanted all the detail. "Through the Looking Glass" inspired me—I spent hours looking behind me in the mirror, trying to see that other world. A poster in my room titled "The Land of Make-Believe", by Jaro Hess fascinated me with its winding roads, its mysterious forests, and all the fairy tale characters. The search for enchantment has engaged me all my life. Drawing, connecting my hand to my brain, is the key to both harnessing my restless mind and setting free my imagination. Today, I draw and collage whimsical scenes, placing the ordinary in unordinary settings. 

Everything that falls into my vision is a possibility; I ask, “Can I use this? Can I put this to work?” For instance, a chance remark, “Did you hear Tommy John got traded to the angels?” led to a series I call  “Baseball in Heaven.” The odd juxtapositions gave me a new way of seeing both the grace of the athletes and the majesty of the architectural settings.

 Playing with scale and perspective lends itself to the narrative, fantasy, and childhood memories. Line and texture help to catch the eye, to create roads as in the old poster to guide the viewer into this new world. There’s motion, confrontation, resolution; each little brick represents a dialog, decisions, and thought.

Eventually, the drawings became stories that begged to be written down and I found another way to connect through art—that is, writing. These are my two pursuits, intertwined in my quest for enchantment. Dip the pen, make a few marks, see the pen go dry, stop and look-not just out the window-but within, to find the magic I sought all those years ago. Then dip the pen again.

BarbaraSwansonSherman.com