Kay Barker: A Sense of Place

Kay Barker has been practising as an artist for over 20 years, exhibiting widely throughout the UK and abroad. She initially studied Fine Art to degree level at Portsmouth Polytechnic (now University of Portsmouth), taking further courses in printmaking at Central St Martins and the London College of Printing. Her career has included working as a tutor in both Britain and France and running her own business specialising in framing for artists, galleries and museums. Her work has been purchased by private and public collections including The Creasey Collection of Contemporary Art and she is a prize winning printmaking (Société Académique d’Argentan).

Kay’s artwork allows her to express her reaction to nature and the environment. She is greatly influenced by landscapes, skyscapes and seascapes as well as geological and architectural subjects, especially monumental structures such as cathedrals and historic ruins. The aim in all of her work it to communicate a sense of atmosphere and to produce art through a variety of media including oil painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawings. By exploring the qualities of each medium and how it may serve her ideas, this allows the piece to develop in many different and often unexpected directions, embracing the use of texture, depth and composition.

As well as working in her studio she often work ‘en plein air’. This brings a sense of immediacy to her pieces as she responds to the constantly changing environment which demands an artist’s decisive reaction. In her most recent work she has discovered ways to incorporate found objects from nature in her work to produce both two and three dimensional pieces.