Artist Q & A: Barbara Cole

For her new solo exhibition in Vancouver, Painting with a Camera, Barbara Cole delves into both the challenges and freedoms that underwater photography presents, and how the effect of water's unpredictable shifts and movement constitute an ideal metaphor for the effects of time, experience and contemplation on the sense of self.

Painting with a Camera opens at Bau-Xi Vancouver on March 7 and runs through March 21, 2026.

1. This exhibition brings together works from three of your series: Impermanence, Shadow Dancing, and Somewhere. When you see these series in conversation, does a new narrative emerge that may not have been visible when each body of work stood alone?

Individually, Impermanence is about dissolution – the body slipping, the identity liquifying; Shadow Dancing is about duality – the split between the self and the shadow; the past and the present; and Somewhere is about expansion – imagination, play, transcendence of time and place. Together, it’s a narrative of self in flux — identity as something fluid, fractured, reassembled, and ultimately liberated.

2. There’s a strong sense of suspension throughout the exhibition and your work in general - bodies suspended in water, figures suspended between centuries, interiors suspended between fantasy and memory. What draws you to this idea of in-between, liminal states?

I’m drawn to liminal states because they are where transformation happens. The in-between is not a pause — it’s an active space. It’s the moment when something is no longer what it was, but not yet what it will become. Water, shadow, historical process, dreamlike interiors — they all create suspension. And in suspension, identity loosens. Certainty dissolves. The body becomes less fixed and more permeable. I’m interested in that instability because it feels honest. We are rarely one thing. We are constantly shifting between roles, histories, desires, and memories.

3. Technically, underwater photography presents immense challenges. How do these constraints shape your creative freedom rather than limit it?

Underwater photography is full of constraints — breath, buoyancy, distortion, light loss, unpredictability. But those limitations are exactly what make it creatively expansive.
Water removes control. You can’t fully direct fabric, hair, or even the body in the same way you can on land. There’s always an element of surrender. And that surrender introduces surprise — gestures that feel unplanned, movements that feel more like painting than posing.

The resistance of water slows everything down. It forces the body into a different relationship with gravity and time. That slowing creates a kind of suspended choreography. Instead of fighting the constraints, I collaborate with them. The physics of water becomes part of the composition.

Constraints create boundaries — and boundaries sharpen intention. When breath is limited, every movement matters. When visibility shifts, light becomes sculptural. Those pressures push me to be more precise and more open at the same time.
In many ways, the constraints don’t limit freedom — they redefine it.

4. There is a quiet sensuality in the way fabric “breathes” underwater. How important is this rhythm and motion in your compositional thinking for the Impermanence series, and what drew you to wanting to capture this using a 1950s camera?

Underwater, fabric doesn’t just move — it inhales and exhales. It expands, collapses, drifts, and recoils in slow motion. That breathing quality becomes the composition. I’m not arranging fabric in a static way; I’m waiting for it to pulse into form. Using a 1950s camera was a deliberate choice. It slows me down. It demands intention. There’s no rapid-fire shooting, no immediate review. The process becomes physical and anticipatory — much like being underwater. You must trust timing, instinct, and breath.

The lens also renders light in a particular way — softer, less clinical. There’s a subtle imperfection, a kind of tenderness in the image. That felt aligned with the series. I wasn’t interested in hyper-sharp documentation. I wanted something that felt suspended in time, as if the image itself were remembering.

In many ways, the camera reinforces the theme: slowing down, surrendering control, and allowing form to emerge through rhythm rather than force.

Barbara Cole, Eloise, from Shadow Dancing. Inkjet Lustre Print Behind Epson Crystal Clear

5. Shadow Dancing employs the wet collodion tintype process, a technique rooted in the 19th century. What compelled you to return to such a labor-intensive, historical medium?

Wet collodion drew me in because it’s physical, time-sensitive, and unforgiving — you have to make the plate, expose it, and develop it while it’s still wet. That intensity mirrors what I’m exploring in Shadow Dancing: presence and absence, the public self and the private history underneath. I also love that the process carries time in its surface. The imperfections aren’t flaws to erase — they’re part of the image’s truth. Using a 19th-century technique to speak about contemporary identity lets the work feel suspended between eras, like the figures themselves.

6. There is a palpable sense of playfulness as well as freedom from the constraints of gravity and era in the Somewhere series. How important is play and freedom to your practice, especially given the technical rigor behind the scenes?

Play is essential. The technical rigor is very real — especially underwater or working with historical processes — but structure creates the conditions for freedom. Once the groundwork is in place, I can let go. In Somewhere, I wanted to push beyond gravity, beyond era, beyond fixed identity. Play allows the figure to move without explanation. It opens space for imagination, for surprise, for a kind of emotional lightness that counters the weight of history or expectation. For me, freedom doesn’t come from the absence of discipline — it comes through it.

7. You’ve exhibited globally and are widely recognized for innovation in your field. What does innovation mean to you at this stage of your career?

At this stage, innovation isn’t about novelty for its own sake. It’s not about chasing the next technique or trying to outdo what I’ve done before. For me, innovation now means deepening — returning to ideas with greater clarity, greater risk, and greater honesty.
It’s about staying curious. About refusing to become too comfortable with my own visual language. Sometimes innovation looks like adopting a historical process; sometimes it’s pushing a familiar one further than I have before. It’s less about spectacle and more about evolution.

I’m interested in innovation as a way of seeing differently — not just technically, but emotionally and conceptually. If the work continues to surprise me, to challenge my assumptions, then it feels alive. And that aliveness, to me, is the real measure of innovation.