From Yazoo Herald, February 16, 2008, "New York gets a taste of the South"

From Gambit Weekly, October 23, 2007

This close-up detail of Lea Barton's collage painting Queen of Twelfth Night reveals her elaborately textured and unusually multi-layered approach.

Being an art critic probably sounds like a fairly genteel gig, and it mostly is, but sometimes there is just too much to do and too little time. Such is the case at the moment, with so many shows about to come down, especially on Magazine Street. Not all are earthshaking by any means, but some have thought-provoking points that ideally should be mentioned before they vanish from public view entirely. Take Lea Barton's collage paintings at Cole Pratt. These provoke at least mild spasms of cognitive cogitation mainly because they are so different from what this previously predictable Jackson, Miss., artist has done in the past. Yes, she's still into Southern womanhood, but the results are more exotic, multi-layered and maybe even multicultural, with echoes of black artists like Radcliffe Bailey, Alison Saar and Renee Stout. As I Recall is a pastiche of floral wallpaper in layers darkening like the varnish of the ages with pale blossoms and a hotcha mama in a mask reminiscent of Bellocq's photos of Storyville belles. Bars of sheet music overlay her face and torso hinting at the unseen presence of a piano man like Jellyroll Morton playing ragtime somewhere in the background, and there is a sense of ghosts " an effect evocatively conveyed in Queen of Twelfth Night. Similar images alternate with the dusky faces of Creole women peering from the portals of the past like pressed flowers turning up between the pages of antique books. Pale, Trova-like circles suggest twirling paper parasols, a delicate touch of the orient. More oriental Creole musings appear in Imposter, a series of lilac circles featuring Victorian women in roulette wheel patterns, or maybe more overlapping paper parasols, all unexpectedly framed by vintage L'il Abner cartoon strips around the edges. Somehow this works "it's delicate, subtle and gives us more to look at, or into, than might be expected " a welcome surprise.

D. Eric Bookhardt

Review by Commercial Appeal