Exhibition · Barbara Prey Projects · Other
“She is, quite simply put, the world’s pre-eminent watercolorist, persisting over the past four decades in the mastery of her idiom.” Museum Director Charles Riley In celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary, Barbara Prey presents a significant new body of monumental paintings in her exhibition, 250th: The American Landscape July 13 – September 7 at Barbara Prey Projects. This series marks a continued investigation into the American landscape as both subject and conceptual framework. As National Gallery of Art curator Sarah Cash observes, Prey “continues to take the watercolor medium, which has an august role in American art, to new heights.” By challenging the traditional conventions of watercolor—particularly with regard to scale, material ambition, and conceptual scope—Prey expands the possibilities of a medium historically associated with intimacy and immediacy. This body of work advances her long-standing engagement with the dynamic interplay between observation and imagination, representation and abstraction. At a moment when digital and virtual environments increasingly mediate our experience of the world, Prey’s sustained attention to the natural landscape asserts the enduring relevance of direct visual encounter. Drawing from her distinguished academic background in art history from Williams College and Harvard, Prey pushes the boundaries of her artistic expression. Her work reaffirms the landscape as a site of contemplation and presence, grounding contemporary experience within the physical world while contributing to an evolving discourse on American art and visual culture. Prey’s paintings, celebrated for her signature approach to watercolor, are in prominent collections worldwide including The National Gallery of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kennedy Space Center and The White House permanent collection, where she is one of two living female artists represented. Commissioned by NASA (the only female…