Anything you learn changes everything you know.
Artist Statement
My education was in mathematics, limnology and my art organically grew out of my reverence of nature and my place within it. Consequently each time I learned a new art medium I took this familiar background and began with cave imagery because exploring, surveying and cave photography helped me experience the invented light, the veiled touch, the deafening silence, solitude and the olfactory of the subterranean.
My work transforms my love of nature, the mystery and caving memories into psychologically contemplative subjects including shadow figures, cloudscapes, cavescapes, asterisms, mixed media and abstractions. I paint grisaille oil drawings on highly textured canvas, paper and panel in contemporary techniques with vintage results. Choreographed brushwork suggests impermanence and transformation, while the heavy texturing simulates the atmospheric energy that charges the work to connect with viewers on an emotional level.
Artist Bio
Marc Barker has over 35 years experience in the arts (marcbarker.com) and over 25 years experience teaching and producing in the field of interactive media (aeternitasinc.com). He managed Paseo Intaglio Printers in the late 1980s and continued into the 90s with editioning and contract printing for local and national artists. He was honored to be selected as the 2004 Festival of the Arts juror for the Arts Council of Oklahoma City. He helped create the Artful Experience committee for the Arts Council of Oklahoma City and he chaired that committee for its first two years which taught principles of printmaking to festival-goers through exhibits and demonstrations. He was the guest juror for the 2009 Paseo Festival of the Arts, and in 2019 for the Goddard Center 47th Annual Competition. Marc was the Allied Artist representing OVAC (Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition), had an exhibit in the State Capitol of Oklahoma’s East Gallery in 2008, and has a painting included in the Oklahoma State Art Collection at the State Capitol. He is represented by Objets Trouvé (objetstrouveok.com) and Nault Fine Art (naultfineart.com).
Eclipse
Forthcoming
Out Cast
Spires of Dolomite
Favored Currents
How Aren’t You
Pareidolia
Winds of Providence
On the Verge
Nonaclipse
Redacted Immigrants