Information below provided by Barrie Bryant, AB's husband and manager, and taken "as is" from the Merglenn Studios website...

AB works primarily in two different mediums, but similarly with both. She produces finely detailed realistic drawings and paintings in graphite pencils or soft pastels. She often combines other media, especially India ink and gold watercolor, with the pencils or pastels to create a bit of mixed media work.

People, animals and birds are the primary subjects AB depicts in her work and she considers her work “Imaginative realism.”

Since AB is particularly deft at rendering people, she produces artwork revealing expressive faces that compel me to think about humanity. I am just beginning to see the depth of AB’s art, and I have only just this moment realized that humanism is what her work is all about.

I am amazed at the detail AB is capable of rendering and I believe that the effect she achieves is heightened by the emotion she gets out of her subjects. This also works the opposite way: the emotion she gets out of her subjects calls attention to the detail.

AB works from photographic references that I help her to take, but she seldom copies them exactly. Her finished artwork is never a direct copy of photographs. What would be the point in that?

When AB and I photograph her models, I think that what I am seeing is pretty good stuff. Then we get the developed photographs back and I feel even better than before. But after AB produces an artwork from the photos I’m blown away. Forget the photography at this point. It really becomes insignificant in the presence of a finished drawing or painting. Her paintings are alive, because I can see in them the blood running beneath the skin of her subjects.

AB and I work together on almost everything. We are also seldom apart from each other.

 

See AB's work at Merglenn Studios