Karden Barbour - She Had a Nice Figure Even Before the Implants

Painting with gouache and ink on paper, Karen Barbour depicts walled gardens, enclosed within clipped bushed and boxwood hedges that imply nature, but in fact function as a means of imposing some semblance of order within our external and internal wilderness. Romance and beauty aside, a garden can also symbolize the human compulsion to control the natural world. Boredom, private desires, anxieties and alienation from our neighbors are all darker shades of nature that may grow behind theses fences.