When you enter the gallery for “The Glorious Way She Moves,” you are immediately enveloped in motion. Fabrics cascade from the ceiling, paint flickers across transparent panels, and hints of glitter catch the light. The atmosphere inside Women & Their Work is alive, energetic, and pulsing, a contrast to the hushed stillness of a traditional art gallery.
Artist Barbara Felix pays tribute to the evolving grace of the female form in this immersive collection. Her subjects are everyday women: mothers, working professionals, retirees. Before painting them, Felix interviewed each woman about her life, diving into her thoughts, politics, hardships, and joy. The conversations not only put her subjects at ease, but helped Felix understand their stories, and ultimately shaped their portraits. The Texas State alum then painted the women as they danced, capturing every emotion and every bend. At the local gallery, each finished piece is paired with a QR code linking to a recording of the woman’s interview, featuring biographical details and the song she danced to.
Felix emulates each woman so intuitively that the descriptions almost become unnecessary. Her choices of material and color, and their layered composition, reveal the narrative on their own. The installation functions as both portrait and dance floor, holding stillness and movement at the same time.
Felix was inspired by her mother, who collected women’s stories long before the smartphone era, to document her subjects’ experiences. The interviews, conducted over several years, range from three minutes to half an hour, giving each woman space to share moments of joy, struggle, resilience, and love.
One standout piece, Glorious Aissatou, portrays a woman who works as a financial adviser, fine art collector, curator, and grant underwriter. Her paternal family is from Guinea, and in the portrait she wears traditional indigo cloth and hand-carved jewelry made by relatives. Felix painted her dancing to “N’be Fe” by Salif Keita and other Mandinka musicians. On paper, with pearlescent pigments, Aissatou’s gestures dissolve into layered fields of color and reassemble into a figure. In an unforgettable moment during the show’s opening reception, Aissatou stood beside the portrait, drawing viewers eager to see the subject and artwork together.
Another work, Glorious Rosaland, depicts a retired information technology executive who Felix painted dancing to “Ladies Night” by Kool & the Gang. The piece shimmers in the gallery: Rosaland appears across multiple layers of thin fabric, and more of her movement is revealed as the viewer shifts position or as light passes through the material. Suspended in the center of the space, the piece moves slightly with the airflow from guests.
The exhibition is arranged so that viewers do not simply move around the venue – it moves with them. The materials sway, the installations shift, and the boundary between artwork and audience softens. The gallery becomes a kind of collective choreography.
“The Glorious Way She Moves” celebrates spirit, resilience, and the experience of being fully alive in one’s body. Felix captures all of it with precision and sensitivity. As she outlined at the exhibit’s reception: “I just hope that people see it and they go home and they want to put on some music and dance.”