'Painted Garden, Inside Out’ is an original mixed media artwork, signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Over a delicate still life of a flower garden, Barnett has bisected the image with vertical and horizontal lines of negative space. In doing so, he reorients the focus of the composition away from the watercolor to the negative spaces, seemingly moving the flowers from the foreground into the back. The precise contours of the negative space juxtaposed against the blurred edges of the watercolor suggest an imaginary border, possibly a window frame or a fence, that creates a lens through which the flowers are viewed. The original painting has quite literally been turned ‘inside out’ as the image now frames the negative space. In addition to the structural play that the title implies, the epithet ‘Inside Out’ suggests a complication in perspective as well—as observers, are we looking from the outside into the flower garden, or are we somewhere inside looking out? By emphasizing the artwork’s negative spaces, Barnett interrogates the intricacies of subject and perspective in the act of observation.

Giclée print on watercolor paper

21.625 x 26 inches, artwork
25.75 x 30.125 inches, frame

Signed and dated lower right

Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting, UV Clear Glass to inhibit fading, and housed in a gold finish wood moulding.