Ladysmith, British Columbia
HB BarryStrasbourg-Thompson
“A continuing practice of art, inquiry and Childlike Awe.”
Fine Artist & Art InstructorVancouver Island, Canada
01The practice
Art as a way of arriving home.
HB Barry Strasbourg-Thompson is a Canadian fine artist and long-time art instructor working on Vancouver Island. He moves between painting, drawing, print and photograph, building translucent, heavily worked surfaces out of pigment, gel, gold leaf and whatever else the studio offers up that day.
He calls the present direction Circling Home, an inquiry into colour, material and consciousness carried out under one standing instruction to himself: Childlike Awe Now.
Selected work
02Selected work
Six recent pieces from the studio. Each one opens its full catalogue record.
I AM A CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE
H7911032026 · 2026 · Acrylic & Gold Leaf on canvas · 24 × 24 × 2 in
Homeless to Home
H7705112023 · c. 2026 · Acrylic, Glass Bead Gel, W/N artist pigment black Fineliner pens on canvas · 60 × 48 × 2 in
Circling Home: Homeless to Home
H7809082024 · 2024 · Acrylic, Acrylic Glass Bead medium, 22K Gold Leaf, Graphite on canvas · 48 × 36 × 2 in
Thompson Family Homestead, Cantley, Quebec
H7613022023 · 2023 · Acrylic, irredescent & interference mediums on canvas · 18 × 24 × 2 in
Homeless2Home
H7815082024 · c. 2024 · Acrylic, 22K Gold Leaf, Powdered Irridescent Pigment on canvas · 48 × 48 × 2 in
CIRCLING HOME
H7905082025 · 2025 · Acrylic, Powdered Artist pigment, W/N FinelinerBlack pen, 2 leaves on canvas · 10 × 8 × 1 in
03Visual language
CirclingHome
A continuing exploration of home, consciousness and the authentic self, worked out in layered paint, gold leaf and Celtic and medieval mark-making. Klee, Kandinsky and Jung are never far from the table.
04Art instruction
Learn to see. Learn to make. Stay curious.
Barry has taught fine art since 1980, in Ottawa hospital and community art departments, for the Ladysmith and Nanaimo arts councils, and as a summer instructor at MISSA. He now teaches from his own studio school, for absolute beginners and returning painters alike.
- Teaching since
- 1980, in Ottawa; later Vancouver Island
- Studio school
- Own art school, Saltair, British Columbia
- Trained at
- BFA, University of Ottawa · OCAD University
The archive
05The archive
The wider body of work is catalogued through Artwork Archive. Each piece is recorded with its media, dimensions, dates and whereabouts as the practice keeps moving.
- 398
- works documented
- Decades
- of artistic practice
- One
- evolving archive
- Painting
- Drawing
- Mixed media
- Printmaking
- Photography
- Sculpture
