Big Ears, 2009, Acrylic on canvas

Artistic Syncretism: Artistic Dream Paintings, 2008, Acrylic on canvas

Eagle Mask, 2008, Acrylic on canvas

Warrior Dance, 2006, Acrylic on canvas

David Barton’s figural paintings celebrate cultural curiosity in vivid fashion. His works are visual interpretations of stories told to him by a friend who traveled extensively in Central Africa on anthropological field trips for a book she was writing on syncretic religion (primarily the interaction of Islam and Christianity on local Animist religions). Although Barton began illustrating his friend’s stories with veracity, he gradually incorporating elements of his own making. Imaginary ritual masks, dress, and accessories began infiltrating his canvases that recall the style of French Post-Impressionist painter, Henri Rousseau. Barton’s emphasis on geometry, flatness, and the decorative engage with the rhetoric of Modernist painting rhetoric yet his paintings reject the primacy of abstraction.