For Barnes, mystery is what the canyons of the Southwest are all about. She is intrigued by the sudden disappearance of human cultures from some of the Southwest’s most magnificent canyons. She sees beyond a visual narrative of natural history, to a cryptic record of ancient mysteries.

Barnes takes her cue as a painter from the natural processes of weathering that she became so aware of in the Grand Canyon, creating richly layered, luminous images through a process of applying paint and lifting it off. When she arrives at an abstracted, eroded vision of a landscape worn down by time and abandoned by humans, the painting is finished.

In 2008, Carole won another prestigious AWS award; the painting will travel to China this year for a special exhibit.