From politics to the abstract, Barbara Warden finds her calling in Lewes

Many mornings, over coffee in her Lewes home, artist Barbara Warden has to give herself a pep talk.

Some days she has to be a little stern: Just get to work already, she might say.

Warden said she has a reason, albeit a self-admittedly crazy one, to be strict with herself.

“I'm trying to do something absolutely ridiculous,” the 79-year-old artist said. “I'm trying to make up for lost time.”

For nearly three decades, Warden put her pencils and paint brushes to the side, focusing on family and a career that required just as much creative force as a detailed abstract mural.

Among the politicians on Capitol Hill, the laid-back lobbyist brought a gentle force to the issues she was advocating.

But on the weekends, she'd throw her '70s-style slacks and jackets to the side, swapping them out for shorts and a T-shirt, letting her hair fly free and exhaling a deep sigh as she made the trek from Washington D.C. to Delaware beaches.

She continued to make that weekend trek, moving a little farther north each time. Eventually, she landed in Lewes, where she is now retired with her husband, Dick Warden, and returning to her tucked-away art supplies.

Warden kicked off her career in politics at nonprofits, later lobbying for several labor unions, including the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the United Auto Workers Union.

Armed with a bachelor's degree in European history and a minor in fine art and a master's degree in drawing and painting, Warden wove her way through the tight-knit network of Washington politics and unions, making a fine career for herself, she said.

During her time as a lobbyist, Warden found that her artistic background gave her an advantage over her clean-cut, business savvy co-workers. She knew how to be personal – how to chat about an art exhibit or new movie, or pretend like she knew what she was talking about with whatever was trending in sports, before diving in to the particulars of politics and the labor movement.

“It made it very interesting to see what you would use to gain access to a conversation. Being an artist made me a better lobbyist," she said.

“When I was up on The Hill, there were just some very good people to work with, who really cared about the issue, who cared about having been elected to represent their constituents, who cared about the legislative process,” she said. “I think it's up to all of us to make it work the best we can. I really do.”

But sifting through the minutia of family medical leave legislation, or trying to convince politicians to vote favorably, was a far cry from her artist's life.

After finally retiring from lobbying in 1999, she wanted to get back into art, but it wasn't quite time to pick up those brushes again.

“I hadn't been thinking as a painter,” she said.

Instead of grabbing a new set of acrylics, she took a quilting class alongside eight 10-year-old aspiring artists and found a new way to play with color: textiles.

“I learned the basics of quilting, and I was off and running,” she said.

For 12 years, Warden, now known as an abstract artist specializing in the nuances of different shades of white, gray and black with some splashes of color, found a world controlled by patterns and color. She stitched together fantastic patterns in unusual ways – ways she said would probably irritate a traditional quilter because of her disregard of straight-laced quilting.

“I love color,” she said, with excitement filling her calm, grounded voice. “That's what I did for 12 years, no regrets.”

Despite her success with creative quilting and establishing herself as a well-known fiber artist, she kept hearing the calling to return to the drawing board.

“I had to find my way back,” she said. “It became very, very important for me to go back to my drawing. So that's what I'm doing now.”

In the mornings, after she gives herself a pep talk, Warden will sit down wherever she's working – either at home or at her new studio at the Studios on Walnut in Milton – and close her eyes.

“It's freedom to just put marks on the page,” she said. “You just have to take a deep breath, and tell yourself not to be afraid. It's worth doing it that way.”

That's how most of Warden's nonrepresentational abstract pieces start, focusing on a combination of white, black and grays with some splashes of color.

It's only been a few years, since 2012, that Warden started drawing again, and eventually, calling on the formal skills she acquired through studying painting. She finds inspiration in the concept of time, elements and nature and the mountains of Montana, where her husband is from and they vacation together.

Formal business wear is completely optional now, and Warden is able to answer the call to create more art at all hours of the day and night. For her friends, though, she said, it may seem like she has even less time now that's she's back to working as a full-time artist. But if they call her at 2 or 3 a.m., they might catch her awake, possibly kneeling on the floor in her second-floor workroom, trying to figure out where her next black-and-white abstract piece will take her.

In honor of her efforts to make up lost time, she's dedicated her most recent series of pieces, which will be featured at the Biggs Museum of American Art in April 2016, to the theme of time.

“365: Elements of Time” started with a small drawing, she said, and every day - after that pep talk - she sketches in an effort to illustrate and explore the concepts of time, often influenced by prose, poetry and science.

“Time is such an elusive concept,” she said. “You know, you can never recapture the time. So I just keep working and working and that's really what I am loving now.”