Featured image: Anchor Baby, Barbara Bose, 2025, oil on canvas, 12 x 24 in. / 30.48 x 60.96 cm.
Barbara Bose creates evocative surrealist paintings that blend mythology, personal memory, spirituality, and symbolism into dreamlike visual narratives.Â
Barbara Bose creates symbolic surrealist paintings that blend mythology, spirituality, memory, and mixed media to explore transformation, loss, and human resilience.
Working across oil painting and mixed media, she combines recognizable figures with symbolic objects, dramatic landscapes, and otherworldly atmospheres to explore grief, remembrance, healing, and the passage between worlds. In If I Could Turn Back Time, Leslie Harris Crosses Over, and Niobe's Shadow, Bose invites viewers into poetic spaces where myth and lived experience converge. Together, these works reveal an artistic practice rooted in emotional storytelling, encouraging reflection on loss, hope, and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.
If I Could Turn Back Time, Barbara Bose, 2025, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 in. / 76.2 x 50.8 cm.
If I Could Turn Back Time presents a symbolic meditation on regret, longing, and the desire to alter the past. A lone figure strains against a chain attached to a distant doorway while an enormous spiral shell, towering owl, and glowing horizon populate the surreal landscape. Bose enriches the oil painting with physical elements including chain, selenium crystal, and LED lighting, extending the narrative beyond the painted surface into sculptural space. The shell evokes time's cyclical nature, while the illuminated portal suggests the possibility of transformation rather than reversal. Rich purples, deep blacks, and muted earth tones heighten the painting's mysterious atmosphere, creating an emotionally charged composition that balances struggle with hope.
Leslie Harris Crosses Over, Barbara Bose, 2024, mixed media, 12 x 24 in. / 30.48 x 60.96 cm.
Created in memory of a close friend, Leslie Harris Crosses Over explores death not as an ending but as a peaceful passage into another realm. A central portrait emerges from dark waters surrounded by symbolic elements including owls, an angel, a small boat, crystals, pearls, and a luminous shell, each contributing to the painting's quiet spiritual narrative. Bose's mixed media approach introduces tactile materials such as pearls, crystals, and sequins, adding subtle luminosity that reinforces themes of transcendence and remembrance. The restrained palette and carefully arranged symbols create an atmosphere of serenity rather than sorrow, portraying the transition between life and death as one of dignity, acceptance, and enduring connection.
Niobe's Shadow, Barbara Bose, 2022, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. / 101.6 x 76.2 cm.
In Niobe's Shadow, Barbara Bose intertwines classical mythology with contemporary reflection through a haunting symbolic landscape inspired by the tragic Greek figure Niobe. A monumental shadow stretches across windswept grass toward the moonlit shoreline, while distant travelers depart upon individual magic carpets, each responding differently to the past they leave behind. The inclusion of Niobe's eternally weeping cliff anchors the composition in ancient myth, transforming the landscape into a meditation on grief, memory, and personal choice. Dramatic contrasts between illuminated grass, dark water, and the expansive night sky establish a contemplative mood, while the elongated shadow becomes a metaphor for the emotional histories that accompany every journey toward an uncertain future.
Across If I Could Turn Back Time, Leslie Harris Crosses Over, and Niobe's Shadow, Barbara Bose creates deeply symbolic works that explore memory, mythology, and spiritual transformation. Her integration of surreal imagery, classical references, and mixed media materials allows personal experiences of grief and hope to resonate on a universal level. Rather than offering definitive answers, Bose constructs contemplative visual narratives that encourage viewers to reflect on loss, healing, and the unseen connections that shape human experience. Together, these works demonstrate the enduring power of symbolism to illuminate life's most profound emotional journeys.
Thorny Issue, Barbara Bose, 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 48 in. / 76.2 x 121.92 cm.