RE: Holly Barker

My work is characterised by an intuitive approach to mixed media and painting. Photography is my capturing eye. The intuitive painting part of me, developed out of a time where I had no recourse to alleviate mental suffering from the challenges that at the time felt unsurpassable. Presently a large part of my art is an attempt to move myself from enculturation.

The Mayflower, The One Sure Oven

Crackling wood on glowing orange and blue embers against hoofed black iron, cursing cook, sizzling roast, slamming oven doors. Screaming and steaming copper kettle or it could just be burning amidst Laurie Lee in his tumble down cottage with his sisters in the Cotswolds. 

The object is evocative for me in many ways. A fire in the hearth was so central in my childhood home with much conversation, family activity and friends around it.

Its transformative qualities struck me: material from raw to light to dust in a moment. What a hearth can symbolise, at best, for children and families in the home as opposed to a lack in institutional care. A call out to those with no hearth is echoed in my painting and for those comfortable with that situation it means nothing.