Barbara Feith

Memorial Exhibition

RUTH UPJOHN GALLERY

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Exhibition Details:
Barbara Feith
April 20 – 30, 2022
RUTH UPJOHN GALLERY
Tuesday – Saturday
9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Virtual opening
April 21, 3 p.m.
In-person reception
April 27, 5-8 p.m.

Scroll down to view select works from the exhibition.
Artworks are not for sale.

The Women’s Art Association of Canada is pleased to present an exhibition of watercolours and mixed media paintings, in honour of long-time and active WAAC member Barbara Feith (1927 – 2021).

Barbara had a studio on the second floor at 21 Prince Arthur Avenue. As a studio artist, she exhibited in group shows, participated in many gatherings of the artists, and was involved in the collaborative project with poets of the Long Dash Group.

In recognition of Barbara’s very generous bequeath to the Women’s Art Association of Canada, the organization has designated her former studio as the Barbara Feith studio for WAAC’s artist-in-residence program.

In addition to her superb watercolour skills, Barbara will long be remembered for her charming manner, wit, sense of humour and sunny nature. Above all, she was a lady with flair. This exhibit is a tribute to Barbara’s artistic versatility, and oeuvre in the Arts. It is dedicated to her daughters, Shelagh Feith and Megan Williams, and the rest of her family.

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Featured Works

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“Magical Carpets”
Watercolour
14″ x 11″

“The Way She Worked”

for Barbara Feith (1927-2021)

by Elana Wolff

Barbara painted tiny rugs, embellished them with ink—



the kind that comes to life

with mythical thinking.



She might have chosen other means

than fine, exacting strokes



but so loved Istanbul, the Grand Bazaar, the turquoise

palaces, the waters and the mosques,



the skies. And that’s the way she worked.

Look, a decorated horse. The golden-



red chiaroscuro glints—

I’ll ride him saddle seat



and he won’t throw me. In private

re-enactment, I’m among the antique flyers.



From on high, I watch an entourage—

a line of inklings—



wending down a hillside

to a strand. Everything these pilgrims own



is added to their backs. It’s hard to understand their will to walk

and yet it’s not:



A woman in a glowing robe and diadem is leading.

Rays are falling on the carpets waiting to be claimed.



Into art does not mean out of reach.

©2022 Elana Wolff

WAAC Member & Artist Elana Wolff shared her poem “The Way She Worked,” written for Barbara Feith and her piece “Magical Carpets,” and the comments from a U.S. poet Michael Gessner.

Comments from Michael Gessner:

Elana Wolff’s “The Way She Worked” must be among our most compelling contemporary lyrical elegies. The shift in narrative voice, gives a different (magical) point of view. The “ink” in “thinking” and “inkling,” all work together, organically displaying a nuanced poetic intelligence. The poem is, (in its’ circulation,) organic, and with its colors and sensibilities, one might successfully argue for a stream of synesthesia, especially after the (first person) turn, we are, with the speaker, transformed.

Lines reshape themselves into human figures in flight; colors in “glowing robes;” sounds in shapes reshaping themselves. This is another highly compressed poem of moderate length, and readers unfamiliar with the subject of the poem, (Barbara Feith (1927-2021,) would benefit from the originality of her work, Magical Carpets, which has been included along with the text. In addition, with the concluding lines, the poem turns once again, to include the subject of art itself, and in this way is not only a paean to the artist, but to Art:

“Rays are falling on the carpets



waiting to be claimed.



Into art does not mean out of reach.”

—Michael Gessner, author of Nightshades (BlazeVOX Books, 2022)