Barrington R. DeMers has been living and working in Bradenton Florida since 1983. Miro, Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh are some of the artists that have inspired his contemporary style in his artwork. He is especially interested in the interaction of the color and form in his abstract expressionist style. He is known by his friends as the "the pixel pusher" because he paints digitally by moving pixels of color on the computer screen with his digital paint brushes. Bary's digital works of art are Giclée's prints on canvas or paper and are created and printed using state of the art digital technology. Bary has done many exhibitions in the South West Florida area and has won numerous awards and honors including Honorable Mention in the 2D 3D exhibition 2003 at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers, the Digital Age Art Exhibition 2000 at Venice Art Center and best of show for Digital Fine Artists Association 2000 show at Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art and Design. |
| Barrington R. DeMers Barrington R. DeMers has been living and working in Bradenton Florida since 1983. Miro, Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh are some of the artists that have inspired his contemporary style in his artwork. He is especially interested in the interaction of the color and form in his abstract expressionist style. He is known by his friends as the "the pixel pusher" because he paints digitally by moving pixels of color on the computer screen with his digital paint brushes. Bary's digital works of art are Giclée's prints on canvas or paper and are created and printed using state of the art digital technology. Bary has done many exhibitions in the South West Florida area and has won numerous awards and honors including Honorable Mention in the 2D 3D exhibition 2003 at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers, the Digital Age Art Exhibition 2000 at Venice Art Center and best of show for Digital Fine Artists Association 2000 show at Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art and Design. |
| Barrington's artistic career began shortly after high school at Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts where he studied interior design. In the process he developed a love for the clean lines of modernist interiors. Always an excellent craftsman, he began painting brightly colored, geometric supergraphics on walls of homes in the Ocean Grove and Asbury Park community When he moved from New Jersey to Boston in 1971, he turned his attention to furniture creation. He expressed his love affair with wood in thick slabs of natural pine glazed with heavy coats of polyurethane and turned into coffee and dining tables. He also experimented with chairs made from whiskey barrels and used wire spools, applying his skillful hands and eyes to any wood with character, preferring weathered boards with history and character. The organic shapes of his bark-bordered surfaces united the whimsical curves of 1950s modern décor with the back to nature fervor of 1970s counterculture.
Unfortunately, by 1977, he had developed rheumatoid arthritis. He and his wife Virginia married in 1978 and moved to Brown County, Indiana, where, in 1980 their daughter Anna Sycamore was born. Realizing that his days as a professional wood worker were over due to his health, in order to contribute to his family's livelihood, Barrington returned to school, to study computer science. In 1983, the family moved from Indiana to Florida. Since 1986 he has worked as a computer specialist, continuing to study as personal computers increased exponentially in their capacity to generate color and shapes of dazzling intricacy. Along the way, he realized the computer's potential as a tool for art.
His approach to "painting" with the computer brings the eye of a boy who grew up worshipping the abstractions of the modernists to the incredible magic of computer-generated imagery. Though many digital artists begin with photographs, Barrington usually begins with the blank screen and the wealth of powerful computerized tools and color. In all his work, a passion for brilliant color and mesmerizing design combine in creations of startling originality. Often the embyo of one piece is in a small patch sliced from an earlier one.
His most recent paintings have moved away from the flat space of abstract expressionism to a more dimensional quality, often displaying literal focal points where shapes seem to vanish. Forms repeat and fold into each other, shaded as though cast in bright, intergalactic light. Sometimes they seem almost literally extraterrestrial; others they seem beyond the cosmos itself. Where many earlier works shunned any single focus, allowing the viewer to get lost in the meanderings of color across the picture plane, these organize around a center. Yet these most recent works share with those of the worm hole series, the theme of distant spaces and infinite possibility. Their otherworldliness may evoke thoughts of science fiction, but it invites a deeper meditation on the vastness of reality and the workings of the forces of nature. Those physical laws, the same for his beloved trees and wood as for planets and asteroids and even for the pixels on his screen, ultimately underlie all creativity, prodding the artist toward shapes that perpetually echo their elegant
orchestrations. Just as every creature's present form evolved from its past, shaped by the laws of nature, each image emerges through stages, its final shape emerging kaleidoscopically from the chrysalis of its inception.
Opening Reception for Art Uptown Gallery
(Left to Right) Homer G. Cablish, III, Kathy Cablish, Virginia DeMers, Barrington R DeMers
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