ARTS & CULTURE
By Abigail Singrey
Still Painting: Another Barn
For an Arkansas painter who has spent decades chasing light through old barns, the Colburn Barn offered George Dombek a rare gift: no roof. For a brief moment during its restoration, sunlight poured into a space normally defined by shadow, and Dombek knew he had to paint it.
At 82, Dombek has slowed his pace a little, often returning to familiar source material while searching for something new. But the chance to paint the historic barn at Cane Hill was irresistible, bringing him back to a subject that has fascinated him since graduate school: the interplay of light and shadow.
For Dombek, an Arkansas native with a longtime fascination with architecture, the barn offered more than a compelling study in form. The 36-foot-by-60-foot barn is built around an oak timber frame, with its massive timbers joined with traditional mortise-and-tenon construction and wooden pegs, resting on a sandstone foundation. The 19th-century stonework and heavy timber frame carry the marks of another era, when the structure was likely used to store apples and farm animals.
Over time, the barn fell into disrepair before Historic Cane Hill acquired it in 2023 and began an ambitious restoration.
Particular care went into preserving the timber framing, especially evident in the barn’s open loft. Craftspeople from the Timber Framers Guild helped guide the work, ensuring the restored structure remained faithful to the building traditions of its time.
For Dombek, those exposed beams, weathered surfaces and shifting shadows provided the visual complexity that has held his attention since creating two volumes of photographs featuring Northwest Arkansas barns for a historical preservation class during his time as a student at the University of Arkansas.
Before long, those images of barns began finding their way into his paintings. Even as architecture and teaching jobs carried him elsewhere, Dombek kept painting whatever caught his eye, carrying those early lessons in structure, light and shadow with him.
After returning to Arkansas and building a permanent studio, his subjects widened to include old machinery, landscapes and the intricate forms of the natural world. Still, barns endured. Now, Dombek has begun circling back to some of the subjects that have occupied him for decades, revisiting old source material even as he continues looking for something he has not yet painted.
The Colburn Barn offered both familiarity and surprise: an old Arkansas structure caught in a fleeting stage of restoration, its bones exposed and daylight pouring through places soon to be enclosed again. “It’s hard to pick a favorite painting, but this is truly my most complex to date,” Dombek said.
Visitors can see this painting and many of Dombek’s other works at his fall open house, offering a broader look at the subjects and visual themes he has returned to again and again over more than five decades.
George Dombek Studio and Gallery’s Fall Open Studio is open this month on Saturdays and Sundays, Oct. 10-11, 17-18 and 24-25, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 844 Blue Springs Road in Fayetteville. It is also open by appointment.