Artworks by Frank Barnes

“My work is about recording what I see, feel and hear in different locations. These locations are places that I am familiar with and frequently re-visit. Such locations are ‘footprints’ of my own life experiences, they are permeated with memories and saturated with feelings. These places are, in most cases, substantial. They exist and are part of a material world. Occasionally the locations are ethereal and are derived from sources which are abstract and transcendental. The sources here are lyrical and the settings lie within the aesthetics of sound and the expression of ‘word’. The images develop through a process of spontaneously creating fresh visual melodies over structured backgrounds that form the settings for the compositions. Whether physical or abstract the paintings are intended as glancing episodes composed within illusionistic spaces. I try to paint as automatically as possible. It’s difficult to talk about ‘mark’ and ‘colour’ as an “idea” in a rational way, yet nothing can compare with its infinite possibilities and the multiplicity of its possible meanings. A smudge, a smear, a stroke of colour can be any number of things depending on shape, transparency, density, scale and context etc. The paintings are built in layers, each subsequent layer adding to a series of cancellations which partially veil the applications of colour, and spark improvisations. Other sources which inspire the paintings are varied, including early Renaissance art, Art Brut, North African art, American Abstract Expressionism, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, John Hoyland, the Fauves, Paul Gauguin, Howard Hodgkin, Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Rae, Hans Hoffman, Alan Davie, Karel Appel, Corneille and the COBRA group. I also look to ancient cultures, historic signs, symbols and motifs, mythology, landscape, and the music of popular traditions, classical western origins, international folk, and jazz.” – Frank Barnes 2018