The Openness of Possibilities

BARBARA TAKENAGA’S paintings are found throughout the town where she has lived for so many years. Her works hang at Williams College Museum of Art, the college president’s residence, the Williams Inn, the homes of her peers (including Jim and Karen Shepard, whose home we feature on page 34). Takenaga, who spends a lot of her time in New York now, taught printmaking, drawing and painting at Williams for more than 30 years before retiring a few years ago. A former student, Izzy Lee, who recently opened Poker Flats Gallery at 112 Water Street in Williamstown with Jared Quinton, is exhibiting Takenaga’s paintings in a group show titled “Feelings Are Facts,” July 31 to September 6. The visual culture of Japanese prints, as well as screen paintings and images from India—gouache, mandalas, and tantric symbols—have greatly influenced Takenaga’s work, often patterned and repetitive. “I am interested in that space between naming an image and its abstract nature,” says Takenaga, a self-described abstract process painter. “I like this openness of possibilities, a fluidity to how the work is read. For me, this process has parallels in how we construct meaning and deal with change in an increasingly challenging and catastrophic world—entropy and randomness reigned in by control, labor and structure.” (Pictured here, Floaters, 2021, acrylic on linen, 30 x 24 inches.)

—Anastasia Stanmeyer
August 1, 2021