Barnaby Furnas’s work is marked by dynamic, large-scale paintings that balance chaos and control, figuration and abstraction. His compositions often depict dramatic, operatic scenes—such as battles, floods, and ecstatic rituals—where bodies and elemental forces clash in vivid bursts of color and motion. Using pigment poured and splashed across the canvas with explosive energy, Furnas constructs visceral worlds that reflect both historical violence and emotional excess. Drawing on American history, biblical stories, and pop culture, he reimagines archetypal narratives through a lens of rupture and transformation. Furnas’s process is both physical and performative, with paint treated as a material in motion—flooding, staining, and surging across surfaces. This fluidity becomes a metaphor for blood, water, or fire, turning each composition into a volatile, symbolic space. While his paintings carry the momentum of action painting, they are carefully choreographed, revealing a deep tension between spontaneity and structure. In blending mythic imagery with painterly experimentation, Furnas interrogates the spectacle of violence and the fragility of the human form. Through theatrical scale and gestural force, his work evokes a heightened emotional terrain, where narrative and abstraction bleed into each other. ...
