Leslie Barlow’s mixed-race identity inspires her to paint underrepresented people

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, United States on 2016-07-18 23:12Z by Steven

Leslie Barlow’s mixed-race identity inspires her to paint underrepresented people

City Pages
Minneapolis, Minnesota
2016-07-18

Erica Rivera

There are plenty of portrait painters in Minnesota, but few have captured such a wide range of diverse faces in the tender and beautiful way Leslie Barlow does. The recent MCAD MFA grad focuses on the underrepresented faces of the Twin Cities, a mission driven by the lack of visibility of stories like hers: people of mixed-race backgrounds.

Barlow first became fascinated by the question of how we define who we are in the fifth grade, when she was asked to label her race on a standardized test. This was before the “other” box existed or multiple choices were allowed. She checked “African-American” (her father is primarily black), but when she went home and relayed the day’s events, her mother (who is primarily white) asked why she hadn’t checked the “white” box.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled in two different communities or I feel like I’m not part of any community because of my background,” says Barlow…

Read the entire article here.

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