John R. Barkley is an experimental painter living in Chelsea, Quebec. He was born in Ottawa in 1964, and raised in the Ottawa valley. As a boy, his father, an artist as well, encouraged him to draw and paint, and eventually took him to paint on sojourns into the country.
As a young man, he returned to Ottawa to study. In addition to painting, he is also a dedicated scholar, whose studies and interests factor significantly in his art work. His degrees include a Master of Arts in Religion, from Carleton University (2001); a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Visual Art, Magna Cum Laude, University of Ottawa (1996); Bachelor of Arts, Honours, Psychology, from Carleton University (1989); and a Bachelor of Arts, Law and Psychology, Carleton University. In 2000, he wrote a Master's thesis which created a new hermeneutic of art, based upon the work of Jung, Tillich, and Heidegger, he applied it in an analysis of the work of Roland Poulin.
Barkley has been pursuing a professional artistic practice since 1996. Over the last 20 years he has been able to work in his studio, in Wakefield Quebec, as a full time artist. Barkley's paintings explore humanity's relationship to nature and his existential concerns while experimenting with paint application.
Barkley has exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in collections around the world. He is represented both nationally and internationally.
He begins work with a conceptual idea but then the art making process largely directs the completion, and one work often then leads to another. In his work he examines consciousness by using abstraction. His work is inspired by the idea that what exists within the human psyche is interconnected with what is happening in nature. He states that our ideas about existence effect who we think we are and how we interact with each other and the environment.
He has developed a visual vocabulary drawn from both nature and industry.He often contrasts the organic with the geometric, and makes use of other visual opposites to create tension in the work.
At times he also uses dark void forms to symbolize the unconscious, the unknown, and refer to the initial state of being "Nothingness" as embedded in numerous creation myths and esoteric texts. Barkley frequently uses the image of water or the void itself in combination with an imposed linear structure, to arrive at a critical narrative while investigating paint application. This approach also enables him to explore the potential of combining painterly abstraction with hard edge abstraction while initiating both aesthetic content and cultural critique.
Barkley's work connects to a range of Canadian artistic traditions. Writers have noted the influence of the Canadian landscape artist Tom Thomson and Group of Seven while also recognizing the Automatiste influence of Borduas and Riopelle in surface application and process method. Barkley is also influenced by the German Neo-expressionists, particularly the surface application and symbolism of Anselm Kiefer.
However he is most influenced by the introspective approach he learned while studying at the University of Ottawa with Catherine Everett and Roland Poulin.
