Claire Barker

Profile

Tasmanian Artist
Expressionist Painter

My original works sell through the Design Centre-Tasmania and The Mill Providore and Gallery both located in Launceston, Tasmania. I have a BCA from the University of Tasmania which i completed 2006. Over the last 7 years my works have sold consistantly with their selling price reaching up to two thousand AUD.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006 Visited, E.Scape Wilderness Café and Gallery, St Mary’s

DUO EXHIBITIONS
2002 Claire Barker and Sylva Locke, Newstead College Gallery, Launceston TAS

Claire Barker and Sylva Locke Selected Paintings, The Star Bar, Charles St Launceston TAS

2001 Claire Barker and Sylva Locke, Newstead College Gallery, Launceston TAS

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2004 Egg, Ei, Eouf, Design Centre- Tasmania, Launceston TAS

2004 Male and Female-The Midnight Painters Guild, Powerhouse Gallery, Launceston TAS

2003 Launceston Show Art Prize, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston TAS
2001 Art Rage, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston TAS
2000 Women Against Violence, Pilgrim Hall, Launceston TAS

Primarily I paint for the pleasure of painting. The images I create are sensual and expressive because of the textual experience I have with the paint while painting. In my paintings I aim to capture emotions and arousals of relationships, the desires of the subconscious and the grace, beauty and piquancy of the female nude. I do not plan my paintings, the subject matter emerges from the painting itself. I see things happening in the abstract marks and tones of the initial brushstrokes. I then make studies of the figures or faces I see emerging and then I paint them in. My approach is very rough. I create my marks and effects with sandpaper, my hands and fingernails, dried up paint brushes, wood carving tools and rags. Artists that inspire me include William Turner, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Egon Schiele and Henri Mattisse.

I began painting under the mentorship of the late George Richardson, founder of Ritchies Mill Gallery and beloved teacher, in 2000. It was then that I discovered my passion for painting the nude and other risqué subject matter. This won me the notoriety of my peers and the titillation of the public when I held my first joint exhibition at Newstead College in 2001, which contained works with titles such as, “Pre-sex, Red Part 1” in which a nude, painted in black and white on a fire truck red background, longingly sucks the finger of her delighted lover. Since beginning my tertiary education at the Academy of the Arts, Inveresk I have continued to paint lusty pictures and as my style matures and refines I find the paintings are becoming bolder and more poignant.

Jo McIntyre said of my second show in 2002, “The overall impression is one of absolute enjoyment, of the reveling in the sensuous application of paint with a typically youthful and energetic abandon. The works have emulations of the techniques of the great expressionists and abstract expressionists such as Francis Bacon, Oscar Kokoschka, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Robert Rauscheberg and Anselm Kiefer.” The Examiner, November 9, 2002.

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