About the artist
HB Barry Strasbourg-Thompson
A full-time working fine artist and instructor on Vancouver Island, with seventy years of painting practice behind him, part of a family line of artists and art teachers reaching back further still. He has taught continuously since 1980, and calls the present direction of the work Circling Home.
Layer upon layer of translucent paint film, in pursuit of one standing instruction: Childlike Awe Now.
01Where it comes from
A practice with its own lineage.
Barry names a handful of touchstones behind the work: not sources to trace directly in it, but company he keeps while making it.
Les Automatistes
the mid-century Québec abstraction movement
Robert Henri
painter and author of The Art Spirit
Mark Rothko
on the artist's inner reality
Christopher Rothko
writing on his father's late work
Dan Harris
meditation and the working mind
02Training
- BFA
- University of Ottawa
- Diplomas (2)
- OCAD University
- Certificate
- Museum of Modern Art, via Coursera
- Studied at
- Ottawa School of Art · St. Lawrence College · NSCAD · CalArts
- Currently
- Design: Form and Meaning, California Institute of Design
03Teaching
- 1980
- began teaching art, Ottawa
- Art Department, Perley and Rideau Veterans Health Centre, Ottawa
- Ladysmith Arts Council
- TD Bank Nanaimo Arts Council; Art in the Schools
- 2023
- contract instructor, Vancouver Island PaintNite
- Now
- his own studio school, Saltair, British Columbia
The fuller record lives on the Archive: every painting, drawing, print and photograph he's catalogued.