Rosemary Barile

Rosemary Barile received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Washington in 1997. The focus of her studies were Fiber Arts and Buddhist Art History in Asia. 

Rosemary left the Seattle area in 2005 to live on the island Maui.  Her work was selected for Art Maui in 2006 and she participated in several exhibitions at The Hui No’eau Visual Arts center in Makawao, Hawaii. 

She returned to the mainland in 2008 and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she studied encaustic painting and began incorporating her fiber art work into mixed media encaustic paintings. While living in Santa Fe she participated in: the “Eldorado Arts Studio Tour”, the largest art studio tour in New Mexico, “Quick Draw” in Taos New Mexico, “The Cradle Project in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Santa Fe Recycle Art show where she won a second place award, and exhibited at the Encaustic Art Museum. 

Barile moved to Spokane, Washington in 2016. She has participated in group shows at Terrain Gallery, Barrister Winery, “Art on the Black Top”, and Spokane Women’s Club. Last October she was part of an exhibition at Bainbridge Island Arts and Crafts where she won the “People’s Choice Award” for her “Queens of Corona” a suite of five, three-dimensional mixed media figures. The “Queens of Corona’ were purchased by Cynthia Sears the founding member of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.    

Rosemary’s work has been exhibited at the Center on Contemporary Arts (CoCA) in Seattle Washington, the Prichard Gallery at the University of Idaho, The Sun Valley Center for the Arts, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, and Bainbridge Island Arts and Crafts.  

Past gallery representation includes: Maui Hands Gallery, Maui, Hawaii, Vivo Contemporary Art, Santa Fe New Mexico, and Patricia Carlisle Fine Art, Santa Fe New Mexico. She is currently represented by Laura Rathe Fine Art in Houston and Dallas Texas.  

Artist Statement

I approach the act of making art as an intuitive and meditative practice.  Drawing from an eclectic mix of ethnic and spiritual influences, my artwork references personal experience, connection to nature and transformation.

I work primarily with encaustic; a combination of molten, pigmented beeswax and damar resin that hardens as it cools. The paint is applied to a rigid, porous surface (usually wood) then fused with heat.  Painting with encaustic allows me to build up layers of color and texture that can be embedded with collage materials such as cloth, mono prints on rice paper,  and elements from nature. The surface can also be carved and etched into or scraped away.  Removing areas of wax allows the underlying elements to reemerge.  Multiple wax layers create a translucent surface where what lies beneath influences the subsequent layers adding visual richness and mystery.  

My background in Fiber Art continues to inform my work.  Many pieces incorporate silk that has been rusted against metal or oxidized on copper, employing various Shibori (resist) dyeing techniques to imprint the fabric.