BARBARA SULLIVAN

Barbara Sullivan is a New York City–based artist whose practice is rooted in painting while extending across photography, drawing, and mixed materials. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, her work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Berlin, and New York City, and has been utilized in musical performances, film, and theater.  

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Her practice explores psychological and emotional narratives, often centered on the human presence as both exposed and resilient. Early photographic work investigates perception and ambiguity through low-light and long exposure, favoring what she describes as the “indecisive moment”—images that resist clarity and invite the viewer to navigate their own psychological response.  

 

Her painting expands this inquiry through the figure, using a vibrant palette and fluid, gestural mark-making to create direct and often confrontational encounters. The figure becomes both subject and mirror, embodying states of vulnerability, hesitation, longing, and strength.  

 

Recent work shifts toward a more immediate and expressionistic approach, incorporating drawing and mixed materials. Influenced by the cultural and social dynamics of 1920s Berlin, the work engages nightlife as a space of performance, transformation, and self-invention. These pieces celebrate the personalities and performers of the metropolis—its dancers, outsiders, and constructed identities—while acknowledging the tensions embedded within those spaces.

  

An ongoing offshoot of this body of work focuses on the dancehall, where identity becomes fluid and presence itself functions as currency. Within these scenes, she examines the interplay between agency and objectification, capturing figures not as fixed portraits but as transient states shaped by performance, desire, and the gaze of others.