Abstracted Landscapes in acrylic and mixed media

Please Note: all images are original works by Barbara Whitbourn

Copyright Barbara Whitbourn 2021

Barbara’s love of wild places comes from her childhood, her father’s family all came from Somerset, near the Quantock Hills. Many visits to Cornwall engendered a love of wild places and eroded coasts, but it was a visit in 2021 that has really inspired her to paint a series based on the mining industry. The crumbling buildings, that were once a source of riches for families that owned them and an inspiration for engineers to build steam engines to pump out the water, remind us of the long history of mining which started in 2000 BC. In her current series, What Lies Beneath, she has used old Cornish words within the paintings and as part of the titles to celebrate the richness of this history, the beauty of Cornwall, and the terrible attrition on the miners and their families. Barbara uses the visual language of the images she recorded in her sketches, the iconic engine houses, the great ruined chimneys and the rusting abandoned machinery. The small arches that she includes in the paintings are the arsenic chambers.