Artist Gigi Barrett’s Mystical Horses and Faces on Display at Darien Rowayton Bank
Artist Gigi Barrett with one of her large horse portraits (4 by 6 feet) on display at the Darien Rowayton Bank
Artist Gigi Barrett’s dramatic paintings, often with luminous skies are on display this month at Darien Rowayton Bank at 1001 Post Road, and it’s hard to take your eyes off them.
Artist Gigi Barrett with one of her large horse portraits (4 by 6 feet) on display at the Darien Rowayton Bank
A horse gallops across a vast plain, mountains in the distance, a luminous sky above that might remind you of El Greco. More horses in another picture, with — if you’re watching carefully — clouds in the shape of horses above them. The Charles W. Morgan whaling ship. Large faces, partly obscured. Several of the paintings are very large, and two are six by four feet or four by six feet.
Another Gigi Barrett painting on display at the bank. On her website you can see several paintings with partially covered faces.
Another face, mysteriously obscured
The top part of a painting six feet high by four feet wide. if you look at the clouds above the horse on the right ...
... you can just make out several horses' images in the sky and clouds
Horse and rider
Barrett, who works at the Darien Chamber of Commerce, has been making art since she was five, and primarily with charcoal drawings. Nowadays her paintings are mostly portraits. It can take months to finish one of her large paintings, she said.
Horses are important to her. She volunteers with Beech Brook Farm in Mystic, an equine rescue organization, and 25 percent of the proceeds of her paintings usually go to the organization. “I used to ride when I was a kid,” she said.
Barrett and her husband live in Stamford, where she has a room to paint in — unless it’s one of the 24-square-foot horse paintings (those had to be done in the kitchen).
Her husband, Tony Giugliano, got it to the exhibit (which runs through the end of the month) in the back of a pickup truck. He said he knew what he was getting into when he married an artist.
You can see more of her artwork and learn more about it on her website, BlueEyedDingo.com.
