Ali Barker: painter

Today, I met Ali Barker, an artist based in Liverpool. Ali paints from music references, as she also plays violin and viola, so she understands not just how visual arts work but also how music works. I really enjoyed the meeting today, talking about the two different sides of artists and musician; the precise and organised vs the creative and chaotic. Ali Barker’s work has a little bit of both. Her geometric paintings are a reflection of this “obsessive” side of creative individuals where everything has to be on time, pre-planned and well structured to be successful. Conversely, once a plan is established, it is needed some chaos and freedom for artists to experiment and achieve new stages, with new ideas and points of view. Ali’s freedom and intuitive perception are beautifully represented in her expressive collection of works. Finally, the layered paintings are a combination of both geometric and expressive ones, where both sides merge into one piece of art.

After having a long and productive conversation about our work and research, we got some very interesting and innovative ideas to start a collaborative project. Some outcomes I got from this fantastic meeting was the idea of pitch and harmony and its transformation into colour and geometrical structure, as we have a form and plan in a music score. Besides, a music score is a very meticulous and precise indication of actions to produce music, but it is not music/sound itself. It is the sound and not the score what makes the audience to “feel the music”, to express it. As it occurs with Ali’s expressive works. So, considering this, the layered paintings could be understood as a mixture of a music score with its result as sound. This is the initial point of our collaboration that promises to be very interesting and colourful. I am really looking forward to it!

This is Ali’s website: http://www.alibarker.com, here you can see some other works, as the Skylines for both the Wirral and Liverpool endings of Queensway tunnel.

More info coming soon.

 

 

Georgi Gill: poet

Today, it has been a very productive day in terms of research. I had amazing meetings and feedback about my current work, I had my first contact with Freya Chambers, the clarinettist involved in my piece Triptych, and finally, the poet Georgi Gill (https://georgigill.blog) and I have started to work in Dans les noirceurs. We had very creative and inspiring meeting where we discussed the colour black, what is black in nature? in psychology? is it neutral or negative? How can the idea of emptiness from the colour black be translated into poetry or music in a different way than silence? These questions have made us think about the structure the work will follow, will it be divided into movements/acts?

A concept I got very interested in was the idea of the black mirror, a tool painters used to simplify colours and tonal range from surrounding objects. We also spoke about black madonnas, black angels (and also George Crumb’s Black Angels) and the idea of the existence of black as Nothingness before the creation of the Earth, the darkness before the Big Bang or its biblical point of view.

A very inspiring brainstorm that we are really looking forward to develop. It was also great to see the baritone David Cane, he will be one of the performers in this huge project. Can’t wait to keep working in this super black project!

Black and Dans les noirceurs

One of the most ambitious and innovative projects I am working at the moment is Dans les noirceurs (provisional title). This project that will be present as a concert performance but also as an audiovisual installation will be the result of working with the poet Georgi Gill and the artist Èlia Navarro. Three of us will work around the concept of black. Is black a shadow? Is the lack of light? It is just another colour or all the colours? Which connotations have this colour had through History? Can be black used as a light as Henry Matisse proposed?  These questions are just the start of this project in which we are really looking forward to immerse ourselves.

More news and meetings coming very very soon.

Triptych

My last work Triptych is now finished. This composition has helped me to analyse some common concepts between music and visual arts, and also to apply the nature of collaboration to the piece. This piece is formed by three movements without a pre-established order of performance. Each of them is a reflection of the action of collaborating. Density is a choreographed piece where the painting process and the bass clarinet sound merge to create a common work. The painter and architect Roland Keogh will perform this and the other two movements, each of them in a different panel of a triptych canvas, and the clarinettist Freya Chambers will interpret the music.

Other of the movements, Textures, for viola and double bass, is a reflection of how textures can be created in both painting and music. In this occasion, the painter will listen to the music and create shapes according to his perception. As an action-reaction collaboration.

Finally, but not the final one (or perhaps yes), Motion, is a quick and short movement where clarinet, viola and double bass perform the music, while the painter is ignoring any audible inspiration to constantly work around the concept of non-stop motion. It is like an individual collaboration where both disciplines are connected just because of the concept applied.

As I previously mentioned, the movements can be performed in any other proposed by the painter, in this way the multidisciplinary piece will have many different perceptions, timings and contrasts.

More info about event dates coming soon.