Artist Interview: Ali Barker | Cass Art

Ali Barker is a up to date summary artist primarily based in Liverpool.  She was the winner of Merseytravel’s ‘Art on the Network’ opposition in 2011, with two of her skyline murals of Liverpool and Wirral forever installed on the panelling at either finish of the Queensway (Birkenhead) Tunnel.  She held her to start with solo demonstrate ‘Four-Dimensional Colour’ in 2016, and done her MA in Good Art in 2019.

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Ali operates with a preset palette of twelve colours to characterize the colors she perceives as a result of her experiences of the phenomenon of audio-color synaesthesia – when listening to tunes, she perceives each individual notice of the musical scale as a specific colour. She is encouraged and determined by these activities, drawing on them and her musical history (she performs the violin and the viola) to generate her paintings. Starting off from her perceptions whilst listening to unique items and/or from the written music, her procedure translates melodies and excerpts into colourful paintings, ranging from gestural works to geometric patterns.

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Hi Ali, many thanks so substantially for using the time to speak to us, to begin with could you inform us a little little bit about your journey as an artist?

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Yes, of study course. My creative journey is a very little unconventional, as I didn’t analyze art at faculty – I experienced to pick out possibly art or tunes to match in with 3 science subjects, so I selected songs! My 1st degree and vocation have been science-based mostly, but, in my spare time, I continued to make artwork and check out galleries and exhibitions, as perfectly as enjoy in community orchestras.

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In 2009 I made the decision to examine A-level art element-time, which is when I started off to take a look at the connections involving tunes and art. A couple of yrs afterwards, after 20 decades in my earlier profession, I left that at the rear of to aim on my artwork. I threw myself into finding out Basis Artwork and Design and style for a yr, which enabled me to experiment with connecting my synaesthesia, my musical qualifications, and my artwork. Immediately after a few of a long time of establishing my apply on my have, I examined part-time for a observe-based mostly MA in Fine Artwork, which supplied a framework to fully grasp what is most vital to me in my follow: my private encounters of synaesthesia and of enjoying and listening to music, and the processes I use to make my perform.

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Your do the job is closely tied to your encounter of synaesthesia when listening to tunes.  How do the sounds translate into colors and shapes, is it rather literal to you or do you get one thing different from every single unique piece of music?

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The colors I perceive are always the exact for particular notes of the musical scale and they are the setting up stage for my artworks. What I ‘see’ is tricky to describe in words (quite a few synaesthetes come across it tricky to explain their ordeals) but could be explained as fleeting perceptions of brilliant colors in my mind’s eye. I really don’t take into account my synaesthesia to be a ‘condition’, fairly an ‘addition’ to my everyday lifetime. The designs and styles in my do the job are not literal reproductions of my ordeals I attract on my musical qualifications and use the precise colors I perceive as the stimulus for my artworks in reaction to distinct parts of tunes. I am normally motivated by the audio I am rehearsing/accomplishing, as very well as the wide array of music I hear to, or tunes chosen by a client for a fee.

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The process I employ to establish and make the work tends to contain two methods of doing work, which I refer to as expressive and geometric. The expressive operates are spontaneous, involving listening to the new music and putting down paint in the colours perceived, layering the unique coloured marks and/or manipulating the paint on the floor in response to the form or sense of the songs. In distinction, the geometric is effective can acquire months or months to create via drawings and sketches just before getting executed as a remaining portray. These translational paintings use the colors I perceive in geometric designs representing excerpts or melodies from the prepared songs. Lately my geometric operates (such as the two Mahler paintings in my Cass Artwork exhibition) have been checking out the visual interweaving of two or additional musical themes.

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You have mentioned your do the job is quite a lot course of action-driven, but are there any artists or movements that you have discovered to be an influence on your artwork apply?

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It was a portray by Wassily Kandinsky (also believed to have been a synaesthete) that initially sparked my curiosity in researching the connections between tunes and art: he painted Impact III (Live performance) in 1911 as his response to listening to a live performance of new music by the composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was this investigation for the duration of my A-stage scientific studies which aided me to recognize that my activities had been synaesthesia, and to begin to put down the colours I perceive in paint and determine my musical colour scale. I consider in the early phases of developing my follow, a lot of early 20^th century artists motivated my do the job, such as Kandinsky, Paul Klee (also a violinist), and the Australian artist Roy de Maistre (who experimented with translating whole items of songs into color from 1919 onwards). Wondering about much more up to date artists, Bridget Riley’s sequences of colored stripes, and the massive, vibrant paintings of the late John Hoyland (also born in Sheffield!) have much more typically influenced my paintings. Gerhard Richter’s geometric styles of coloured squares, as perfectly as his manipulation of paint on a floor, have also motivated both of those of my strategies of functioning – equally, I really do not come to feel I want to prohibit myself to only performing in just one way, I tend to swap amongst the two for periods of time.

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What kinds of supplies would you say are integral to your operate?

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I use precise paint colors, largely straight from the tube to hold them thoroughly clean and vibrant – my perceptions of colour are brilliant, so I try to reproduce the colors as intently as possible and limit making use of the duller colors of mixed paint. One color I understand I would describe as a shimmering pink-brown, so immediately after a great deal experimentation, I settled on working with copper paint to characterize that be aware. I generally use Liquitex paints, as they can offer me with the assortment of unique colors I want – my go-to paint is Tender Entire body, but I have also employed their Spray Paint, Acrylic Ink, and Acrylic Gouache, as properly as a selection of their Expert mediums to create the consistency and translucency/opacity I want for unique parts. When performing on canvas, durable stretcher bars are crucial – the Cass Artwork stretcher bars get the job done nicely for me, occur in a vast range of dimensions, are quick to set alongside one another and are robust plenty of not to warp, which is crucial for my geometric do the job!

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Your murals for the Artwork on the Community opposition are an legendary component of the Merseyside landscape.  What is it like to have your function as a permanent general public artwork installation?

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I was a little bit overcome when I gained the competitiveness! It was in the course of my section-time A-amount experiments, ahead of I’d taken the plunge to go away my previous occupation. My digital styles had been employed by the company who built all the panels for the tunnel refurbishment project they screen-printed and fired the colors in vitreous enamel onto the stainless-steel supports. They were being mounted more than 10 years back but should final a prolonged time. My original Liverpool Composition and Wirral Composition paintings are, understandably, not for sale, but are nonetheless available as constrained-version prints. I live on the Liverpool facet of the Mersey, but have a number of connections to Wirral, specially via songs, so I get to travel previous my artwork rather regularly! 

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Lastly, what is in retailer for you for the rest of 2022? Everything you can permit us in on?

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In Oct, I will be Artist in Home for the Wirral Arts Festival 2022. I’ll be doing work with an orchestra and some other musical groups who are carrying out at the pageant, earning artwork in response to some of the pieces they approach to participate in in their concert events and then displaying the finished paintings at the live shows. In point, some of the operates on paper in my present exhibition at Cass Art Liverpool ended up created for the duration of past year’s pageant.

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Usually, I am material to be largely acquiring new perform this calendar year, reflecting on and continuing from thoughts that arose from my 6-7 days solo exhibition and residency task in an artist-led room in Liverpool final summer time. I am also starting off to look in the direction of some opportunity exhibition prospects in 2023 and 2024. There are generally team exhibitions to apply for all through the calendar year, so I’ll see what else will come up!

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Emotion Inspired?

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Ali’s exhibition ‘Musicals to Mahler’ is at Cass Artwork Liverpool until 17th June 2022.  You can see far more of Ali’s function on her website alibarker.com  Be certain to comply with her on Fb and Instagram @alibarkerart

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