Naive Light Over Jerusalem

Barbra Sala Biography:

 

One day, as I was playing the piano, pictures appeared in my mind to the rhythm of the music. I witnessed scenes from my childhood, children dancing and animals flying through the air. There was no drama to this, but rather a sense of love and gentleness… (“Naifs… ces peintres du Québec et de l’Acadie” par Yvon M. Daigle, Anne-Marie Bost, Guy Boulizon, Editions Trécarré).

Growing up in the Bavarian Alps, Barbara Sala found herself eventually living in such places as Africa, Asia, South America, the United States and Quebec, Montreal, and it is from these places that come the scenes found in her paintings.

Going into therapy in mid-life after raising a family, it was music that opened the magical world of painting within her and she has brought forth a style that is at once naïve and symbolic. Her universe of animals, nature and community life talks of myths and tales in contemporary settings and the bright colours on her canvass allow us to enter into a time of innocence and childlike wonder.

Since 1987, she has participated in 16 individual and about 60 group exhibitions in the US, Canada, France, Switzerland, Italy, Tunisia and Israel and she is represented in “Naifs… ces peintres du Quebec et de l’Acadie” and “La Fête au Québec et l’art naïf”, both books about naïve painters in French-speaking Canada.