Tessa Barringer

Ōtepoti Dunedin

Tessa Barringer’s early interest was in life drawing and portraiture. She was fascinated by trying to evoke not only likeness, but also the dynamics of interaction. As her art practice has developed, Barringer has progressed through landscape, skyscape, and lots of very detailed observational drawing before finally settling on birds.

The bird table outside her studio door is now the heart of Barringer’s practice; a tiny stage, reset each morning and the performers invited in to improvise and entertain. The frame for the action remains the same but the script is constantly changing. The stage sets often reference traditional still life but not nature morte; rather these pieces are life held still for an instant only. Each work becomes a sanctuary of sorts, a space in which the headlong rush of time is paused, layered and polished with days, weeks, even months of slow detailed attention to colour, light, texture and form. 

Tessa Barringer completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 2010.