Critical Writing Index

Shame & Anxiety: Dangerous drawing room games

by Jon Davies

Xtra!, Mar. 28, 2008, no. 611, p. 25

Winnipeg artist Daniel Barrow is interviewed about his newest piece, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry presented as a part of the Images Festival. Barrow identifies the piece being born out of a sense of urgency we have about the state of the world, but still seeking to achieve his characteristic balance between "shame and pride, tragedy and comedy." Working with overhead projections and drawing-while-storytelling has been a part of Barrow's life since childhood, where he would play games with beauty pageants and torture chambers, continually adding to simple shapes until they played out to a natural conclusion. These early drawings reveal a great deal about Barrow's fragility, which is ultimately the crux of his work: "I try to keep the piece personally volatile in a way. [If I don't]...it won't seem particularly relevant to anyone in the audience."

ITEM 2008.029 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Every Time I See Your Picture I CryDaniel Barrow