My practice is about exploring my past and present to develop a visual language for flesh. Bodies, and the expression of my own body and sexuality, are central to my work and how I connect to my content. I began with sumo wrestlers, which I reinterpreted as the sensual push/pull of lovers, and the ambiguity of passion vs. aggression. Often my subjects are women and men, usually solitary, occasionally as lovers, often asleep. A few years ago, I began plein air painting and was touched by the similarity of trees and figures.
Matisse asked..."What is my relationship with the model?" I love the demanding immediacy of life drawing, a part of my artistic practice that I share with the model. It is a conversation with someone who is speaking with their body, and I use my body to express my side of the conversation through mark-making. I follow the posthumous advice of Milton Glaser, who advises moving toward what you don’t know. Take yourself out of your expertise and put yourself where there’s a sense of jeopardy.
I'm also obsessed with vintage photography and wish I could time travel. Drawing from carefully chosen black & white, or sepia photos provides the opportunity to enter the past and look around, deliciously rendering and transforming that world as I draw.
“Barbara Herzfeld’s bodies on the other hand some with stark black contours, others rendered in vigorous tones are intriguingly dynamic. They have something in common with expressionistic energy reminiscent of Egon Schiele yet filled with special attention to detail that only female artists have. Her audacity of colour compositions creates unexpected harmonies, depicting humans in unusual postures, crouched or languid, relaxed or tense but always sincere and filling it all with their unique presence.” Text. Dr. Lily Fürstenow…Berlin, Germany
“Barbara Herzfeld is a painter who holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She was a textile designer for twenty years. More recently, she has worked in education and now teaches art to a range of young students.
Barbara’s pieces depict grand Sumo Wrestlers in surreal color and pattern as an amalgam of beauty and aggression. They are a slew of motion and energy. Herzfeld describes, “I loved the skin on skin closeness of these large nearly naked opponents captured in what might be perceived as an aggressive or passionate embrace with facial expressions that could be either amorous or fierce.” In her large watercolors that barely contain the sumo pairs, she pushes this ambiguity of intimacy and aggression while in the smaller acrylic paintings, the wrestlers affectionately curl up with large docile animals.
In 2019, during a studio visit, a collector suggested that she consider painting regular men and women. She tried it. By the time the COVID crisis began, she had made the shift from painting sumos to a more personal exploration of intimacy and sex between everyday people. What persists is that her couples, like the sumos, are entangled with one another. Barbara’s body is central to all her ideas, and her work is an organic exploration and expression of her self. Now that she is living the solitary life that so many of us are experiencing, her focus has shifted, now, to an individual figure as she explores the beauty, lust, and fury of her own isolated flesh.
Barbara Herzfeld has been in solo and group shows at Brandeis University, Harvard University, and several Brooklyn and Manhattan galleries. She was a finalist for a grant from The Massachusetts Council On The Arts. In 2019 she began representation by The Carter Burden Gallery with a solo exhibition.”
Text. Carter Burden Gallery…New York, NY
In 2023, 2024, and 2025, Barbara had three shows in Berlin, Germany at Begegnungstatte Mehr Mitte, curated by Dr. Lily Furstenow.