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David Barker: The Shadow Series
May 10, 2014 @ 2:00 pm - May 22, 2014 @ 3:00 pm
Opening Saturday 10 May 2 – 5pm
Open daily 10am – 5pm
David Barker’s stunning Shadow Series comprises sixteen new alkyd paintings that will take the gallery for twelve days. David enjoys meeting people who come to see his paintings and will be in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
These new works are from sketches, also exhibited, he made about newly discovered villas, sheds, islands and windows he found between Mangonui in Northland and Devonport in Auckland. There will also be five paintings from Venice, a city where David has spent many weeks drawing and painting. What unites the two series is that all the images show cast shadows as an essential common compositional phenomenon.
Along with the Shadow Series, he will also exhibit his portfolio of ten etchings by Takapuna print maker, Merle Bishop. The prints are based on David’s working sketches, studies ranging in subject matter from HMS Victory to a Cornish cutter, rehearsing ballet dancers in Auckland, grazing Arab horses in Canada and a Venetian doorway.
David has included a biographic collection of early works showing the artist’s development from his school days on the North Shore, his time spent studying for a BFA Honours at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland and his secondary teacher training through to undertaking a Masters at the University of Hawaii. After a two year experience teaching at a tertiary level in Melbourne and Hobart, David began to work as a full time artist. Since those early days he has shown regularly, sometimes in solo shows and at other times with international artists. He has exhibited in New Zealand and internationally, in galleries, barns, cloisters, a castle and even a fish cannery!
Apart from his career as a painter, David has taught art workshops from Pauanui to Noumea, Alaska to Italy and Spain to Washington State. They were always rewarding encounters and led to unexpected and new artistic ventures by all. David has offered an art workshop to some of the current art students attending Takapuna Grammar School where he himself spent formative years in the art room under the tutelage of the remarkable art teacher, Owen Lee. This was to be the start of an international career in his chosen profession as a painter that continues today at his studio on the Devonport waterfront.