Barb Stahl Sold at Auction Prices

As a visual artist, I am deeply fascinated by the intimate conversation that takes place between consciousness and creativity. Having explored this fundamental dialogue through my efforts as a painter, insights from the new physics of cosmology continue to inform my work.

With these paintings, I explore the boundaries between the abstract and non-objective, suggesting, yet not fully describing the imagery. In many places the work is ambiguous and leaves room for individual interpretation; observer interaction. Its is this act of observing, of seeing something in the work, you can’t un-see something, that I find analogous to the wave function collapse that occurs in the famous double slit experiment when particles of light are observed. The double slit experiment is one that very elegantly demonstrates how observation affects quantum systems. It is the basis and inspiration for the first principle of Biocentrism.


Biocentric Landscapes assumes at its point of departure that mind is the fabric of the universe and human consciousness is the vehicle through which our world comes to realize itself. This is the ultimate reference for my work.

With my canvases I initiate my process within a framework of crosshatch drip patterns. These provide the matrix upon and from which my imagery will emerge. Much like warp and weft on a loom, they are an operative symbol of the cosmic thread. Like an implicit meaning, the thread represents the connectivity of all matter in the universe. It allows content to emerge. The thread patterns form a grid that weaves in and out of the paintings bringing forth landscapes and other abstracted imagery. Each piece is created in a stream of consciousness process. Many of my canvases and paper pieces are worked and re-worked over time leaving behind previous histories. With each new incarnation these ghosts emerge from behind the layers of paint to join in the stream of consciousness currently taking place on the surface.