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.