Hayley Barker
Hayley Barker (born 1973) is an American painter. Exhibition A, a leader in the global contemporary art market for artist prints, has described Barker's painting practice as the following: "Barker's main subject is the natural world, which she renders expressively in oil on linen. The intuitive undercurrent in her approach enlivens the real and imagined scenes she paints, allowing viewers to pierce directly through to the space between things." Biography. Hayley Barker was born in Oregon in 1973. She received her BA from the University of Oregon, and her MA & MFA in Intermedia from the University  of Iowa. She has shown recent solo exhibitions with Shrine NYC, including a solo booth at The Armory Art Fair. She has had work featured at La Loma Projects (LA), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Chicago), Big Pictures LA, GAS (LA), " The Glendale Biennial" curated by the Pit at the Brand Library & "The Divine Joke", curated by Barry Schwabsky at Anita Rogers Gallery (New York). She has shown with Bozo Mag for the past several years. She lives & works in Los Angeles, California. Work. Of Hayley's first solo exhibition in New York with Shrine in 2020 Barry Schwabsky, art critic and  historian, writes: "Barker’s paintings elaborate spaces that can’t be nailed down and identified. She calls them “spaces of passage,” of transition—across the immeasurable distance from life to death, perhaps, but also within life, from one physical or spiritual state to another. Her works speak of mystery, loss: intimations of what lies beyond the boundaries of the self." Barker has been featured and included in articles published by Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Brienne Walsh covered Barker's 2020 solo exhibition at Shrine, "The Grass is Blue." She writes about Barker's unique and nuanced approach  to landscape painting: "The landscape painting Barker wants to create relates to femininity, an earth-based spirituality, the idea that humans are not separate from nature, but instead, part of it. “I believe we come from the earth, and the earth is our home and our protector,” Barker says." In 2011, Art critic Sue Taylor reviewed Barker's show "Cathedrals" in "Art in America". Taylor writes: Taylor compared Barker's paintings to the work of Georgia O'Keeffe and Vincent van Gogh. Barker's "Cathedrals" is inspired by the childhood diary of Opal Whiteley, who had visionary, spiritual experiences but was  later diagnosed as schizophrenic. Taylor writes: