Blue Bayou | Elizabeth Fontaine-Barr | Original Acrylic Painting

Original acrylic painting by Elizabeth Fontaine-Barr · Expressionist painter · Available at Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide

A dark, feathery tree anchors the left side of the canvas, its silhouette almost black against a hazy purple sky, while Spanish moss drips from an unseen branch on the right, the two together placing this unmistakably in the American South. Between them, a deep blue-purple waterway curves back through the composition, its surface catching the same violet light as the sky above it.

What makes the piece is the color running through the marsh islands scattered across that water, hot orange, magenta, and mint green, nothing close to the muted browns and greens an actual bayou would show. That's not an accident of style, it's how Fontaine-Barr actually works. A New Orleans native, she paints from imagination rather than direct observation, and by her own account, if a reference photo ever triggers a piece, she puts it away almost immediately so the scene can drift into something the camera never captured. This bayou is remembered, not documented.

Collector's Note

A large-scale piece at 36 by 36 inches, substantial enough to anchor a room on its own. Part of the artist's ongoing body of color-drenched Southern landscapes, all rooted in the culture and geography of her native New Orleans, filtered through memory rather than reference.

Acquisition

Available through Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery with worldwide shipping, full insurance, and professional art packaging. Payment plans available. Private viewings by appointment in Tampa, Florida. Virtual viewings available for collectors anywhere in the world. Contact us to inquire. New to collecting? Read our collector guide →

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About the Artist

Elizabeth Fontaine-Barr was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, shaped early by the food, music, and street artists of the French Quarter. She decided to become an artist at age nine, and went on to study painting at the University of New Orleans after a detour through fashion illustration at FIT in New York, one year in the city convincing her she wasn't ready to leave home yet.

Her career after college was anything but a straight line. She opened a frame shop in New Orleans' Garden District, taught children's art classes at the New Orleans Museum of Art, sketched on Julia Street, worked as a food stylist on film shoots, sold advertising for a music magazine, and managed a New Orleans rock band, often juggling two or three of these at once. She met her husband, John, playing bass in that band.

After becoming a mother at 45, Elizabeth stepped away from painting entirely to raise her daughter, not returning to the easel until her daughter was in high school. She still remembers the drive home from one of her first painting sessions back, calling her husband to say, "I have my art-eyes back. I can see again." The bold, Fauvist-influenced color she'd loved in college came right back with her.

Elizabeth now lives and works in California, continuing to develop the bold, imagination-driven style rooted in her New Orleans upbringing.

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