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Ali Barker is a modern summary artist based mostly in Liverpool. She was the winner of Merseytravel’s ‘Art on the Network’ competitors in 2011, with two of her skyline murals of Liverpool and Wirral completely set up on the panelling at possibly end of the Queensway (Birkenhead) Tunnel. She held her very first solo present ‘Four-Dimensional Colour’ in 2016, and done her MA in Fine Art in 2019.


Ali will work with a fastened palette of twelve colours to stand for the colors she perceives via her encounters of the phenomenon of sound-color synaesthesia – when listening to tunes, she perceives each be aware of the musical scale as a particular color. She is influenced and inspired by these ordeals, drawing upon them and her musical background (she performs the violin and the viola) to build her paintings. Starting off from her perceptions even though listening to unique items and/or from the created audio, her system interprets melodies and excerpts into colourful paintings, ranging from gestural performs to geometric patterns.

Hi Ali, many thanks so a lot for getting the time to speak to us, firstly could you notify us a tiny little bit about your journey as an artist?

Indeed, of course. My inventive journey is a tiny unconventional, as I did not research art at faculty – I experienced to select both artwork or tunes to suit in with a few science subjects, so I chose audio! My very first diploma and profession have been science-based mostly, but, in my spare time, I continued to make artwork and go to galleries and exhibitions, as effectively as enjoy in local orchestras.

In 2009 I decided to study A-amount art element-time, which is when I started out to check out the connections concerning audio and artwork. A few yrs later on, right after 20 a long time in my former vocation, I left that behind to concentrate on my artwork. I threw myself into learning Basis Artwork and Structure for a calendar year, which enabled me to experiment with connecting my synaesthesia, my musical history, and my artwork. After a couple of decades of establishing my apply on my have, I researched part-time for a follow-centered MA in High-quality Art, which provided a framework to have an understanding of what is most vital to me in my observe: my private ordeals of synaesthesia and of playing and listening to songs, and the procedures I use to build my perform.


Your do the job is intently tied to your knowledge of synaesthesia when listening to tunes. How do the appears translate into colours and styles, is it quite literal to you or do you get something various from every single distinctive piece of music?

The colors I perceive are always the very same for certain notes of the musical scale and they are the beginning place for my artworks. What I ‘see’ is challenging to describe in terms (numerous synaesthetes uncover it complicated to explain their activities) but could be explained as fleeting perceptions of dazzling colours in my mind’s eye. I never take into consideration my synaesthesia to be a ‘condition’, alternatively an ‘addition’ to my everyday life. The designs and shapes in my operate are not literal reproductions of my activities I draw on my musical background and use the certain colours I understand as the stimulus for my artworks in response to distinct parts of songs. I am frequently influenced by the audio I am rehearsing/undertaking, as very well as the huge array of audio I hear to, or music chosen by a consumer for a fee.

The course of action I make use of to acquire and make the do the job tends to include two ways of doing the job, which I refer to as expressive and geometric. The expressive works are spontaneous, involving listening to the audio and placing down paint in the colors perceived, layering the different colored marks and/or manipulating the paint on the surface in reaction to the shape or truly feel of the music. In contrast, the geometric is effective can take months or months to create by drawings and sketches in advance of currently being executed as a remaining portray. These translational paintings use the colours I perceive in geometric styles symbolizing excerpts or melodies from the published songs. Recently my geometric functions (such as the two Mahler paintings in my Cass Art exhibition) have been exploring the visible interweaving of two or more musical themes.


You have mentioned your operate is pretty a great deal approach-pushed, but are there any artists or actions that you have identified to be an impact on your art observe?

It was a painting by Wassily Kandinsky (also believed to have been a synaesthete) that initially sparked my interest in exploring the connections in between new music and art: he painted Perception III (Live performance) in 1911 as his reaction to listening to a live performance of new music by the composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was this investigate for the duration of my A-amount studies which assisted me to realize that my experiences were synaesthesia, and to commence to place down the colours I understand in paint and outline my musical colour scale. I imagine in the early levels of producing my exercise, numerous early 20th century artists motivated my do the job, including Kandinsky, Paul Klee (also a violinist), and the Australian artist Roy de Maistre (who experimented with translating full items of audio into colour from 1919 onwards). Wondering about far more modern day artists, Bridget Riley’s sequences of coloured stripes, and the significant, vibrant paintings of the late John Hoyland (also born in Sheffield!) have a lot more generally affected my paintings. Gerhard Richter’s geometric styles of colored squares, as perfectly as his manipulation of paint on a area, have also motivated both of my means of functioning – in the same way, I never truly feel I want to restrict myself to only doing the job in 1 way, I tend to switch involving the two for intervals of time.


What types of components would you say are integral to your perform?

I use precise paint colors, mostly straight from the tube to keep them clean and vivid – my perceptions of color are vibrant, so I test to reproduce the colours as closely as doable and restrict using the duller colours of combined paint. One particular color I perceive I would explain as a shimmering red-brown, so following considerably experimentation, I settled on utilizing copper paint to stand for that be aware. I mainly use Liquitex paints, as they can provide me with the vary of specific colours I want – my go-to paint is Soft Physique, but I have also used their Spray Paint, Acrylic Ink, and Acrylic Gouache, as properly as a assortment of their Specialist mediums to build the regularity and translucency/opacity I want for different items. When functioning on canvas, durable stretcher bars are vital – the Cass Art stretcher bars do the job properly for me, arrive in a extensive selection of sizes, are effortless to set with each other and are powerful enough not to warp, which is very important for my geometric operate!


Your murals for the Artwork on the Network opposition are an iconic part of the Merseyside landscape. What is it like to have your function as a long term general public artwork installation?

I was a bit overcome when I gained the opposition! It was for the duration of my aspect-time A-amount reports, in advance of I’d taken the plunge to go away my preceding vocation. My digital layouts have been employed by the firm who created all the panels for the tunnel refurbishment challenge they screen-printed and fired the colours in vitreous enamel on to the stainless-steel supports. They were put in more than ten years ago but need to previous a very long time. My original Liverpool Composition and Wirral Composition paintings are, understandably, not for sale, but are nevertheless readily available as confined-edition prints. I are living on the Liverpool aspect of the Mersey, but have numerous connections to Wirral, especially through tunes, so I get to travel past my artwork rather consistently!

Ultimately, what is in retail store for you for the rest of 2022? Anything at all you can let us in on?

In October, I will be Artist in Residence for the Wirral Arts Festival 2022. I’ll be doing the job with an orchestra and some other musical groups who are undertaking at the festival, creating artwork in reaction to some of the items they approach to play in their live shows and then exhibiting the finished paintings at the concert events. In truth, some of the is effective on paper in my recent exhibition at Cass Artwork Liverpool ended up designed throughout past year’s competition.

Normally, I am written content to be mainly establishing new get the job done this calendar year, reflecting on and continuing from tips that arose from my six-7 days solo exhibition and residency challenge in an artist-led room in Liverpool very last summer time. I am also setting up to glance in direction of some potential exhibition prospects in 2023 and 2024. There are usually group exhibitions to apply for in the course of the yr, so I’ll see what else comes up!

Experience Encouraged?



Ali’s exhibition ‘Musicals to Mahler’ is at Cass Artwork Liverpool till 17th June 2022. You can see more of Ali’s work on her website alibarker.com Be guaranteed to comply with her on Facebook and Instagram @alibarkerart

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