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Ali Barker is a up to date summary artist centered in Liverpool. She was the winner of Merseytravel’s ‘Art on the Network’ levels of competition in 2011, with two of her skyline murals of Liverpool and Wirral permanently installed on the panelling at possibly stop of the Queensway (Birkenhead) Tunnel. She held her initial solo exhibit ‘Four-Dimensional Colour’ in 2016, and finished her MA in Great Art in 2019.


Ali works with a mounted palette of twelve colours to depict the colours she perceives by way of her experiences of the phenomenon of sound-colour synaesthesia – when listening to audio, she perceives every notice of the musical scale as a precise colour. She is influenced and motivated by these activities, drawing upon them and her musical track record (she plays the violin and the viola) to make her paintings. Starting off from her perceptions while listening to specific pieces and/or from the written new music, her method translates melodies and excerpts into colourful paintings, ranging from gestural operates to geometric designs.

Hi Ali, thanks so substantially for having the time to communicate to us, for starters could you convey to us a minor bit about your journey as an artist?

Indeed, of system. My inventive journey is a small unconventional, as I did not examine art at university – I experienced to select possibly artwork or music to healthy in with a few science topics, so I selected songs! My very first degree and profession were science-centered, but, in my spare time, I continued to make artwork and visit galleries and exhibitions, as properly as enjoy in area orchestras.

In 2009 I decided to study A-amount art portion-time, which is when I started out to take a look at the connections amongst music and artwork. A couple decades later, soon after 20 many years in my past career, I remaining that at the rear of to concentrate on my artwork. I threw myself into studying Basis Artwork and Design and style for a year, which enabled me to experiment with connecting my synaesthesia, my musical qualifications, and my artwork. Soon after a couple of several years of producing my practice on my very own, I studied portion-time for a practice-based mostly MA in Fine Artwork, which presented a framework to have an understanding of what is most critical to me in my follow: my individual experiences of synaesthesia and of actively playing and listening to music, and the processes I use to develop my perform.


Your function is closely tied to your encounter of synaesthesia when listening to songs. How do the seems translate into colors and styles, is it pretty literal to you or do you get something various from each and every various piece of tunes?

The colours I understand are always the same for precise notes of the musical scale and they are the starting place for my artworks. What I ‘see’ is hard to explain in text (lots of synaesthetes come across it tricky to describe their ordeals) but could be explained as fleeting perceptions of bright colors in my mind’s eye. I really do not take into consideration my synaesthesia to be a ‘condition’, instead an ‘addition’ to my day-to-day life. The designs and styles in my operate are not literal reproductions of my activities I draw on my musical history and use the particular colours I understand as the stimulus for my artworks in response to certain parts of songs. I am often motivated by the new music I am rehearsing/carrying out, as very well as the huge range of audio I listen to, or tunes picked out by a client for a fee.

The system I make use of to establish and develop the perform tends to require two means of performing, which I refer to as expressive and geometric. The expressive functions are spontaneous, involving listening to the tunes and placing down paint in the colours perceived, layering the unique colored marks and/or manipulating the paint on the area in reaction to the form or feel of the tunes. In distinction, the geometric will work can get weeks or months to develop by way of drawings and sketches right before becoming executed as a remaining portray. These translational paintings use the colours I understand in geometric designs representing excerpts or melodies from the created music. Not long ago my geometric operates (these as the two Mahler paintings in my Cass Art exhibition) have been checking out the visual interweaving of two or more musical themes.


You have explained your function is really substantially approach-pushed, but are there any artists or movements that you have discovered to be an impact on your art follow?

It was a painting by Wassily Kandinsky (also thought to have been a synaesthete) that 1st sparked my desire in looking into the connections among songs and artwork: he painted Effect III (Live performance) in 1911 as his reaction to listening to a concert of new new music by the composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was this investigation through my A-level experiments which helped me to comprehend that my experiences ended up synaesthesia, and to get started to place down the colours I understand in paint and outline my musical colour scale. I imagine in the early levels of acquiring my apply, several early 20th century artists affected my perform, which includes Kandinsky, Paul Klee (also a violinist), and the Australian artist Roy de Maistre (who experimented with translating complete items of new music into colour from 1919 onwards). Contemplating about much more up to date artists, Bridget Riley’s sequences of coloured stripes, and the huge, colourful paintings of the late John Hoyland (also born in Sheffield!) have additional normally affected my paintings. Gerhard Richter’s geometric patterns of coloured squares, as nicely as his manipulation of paint on a surface, have also influenced both of my means of operating – likewise, I don’t truly feel I want to limit myself to only operating in a person way, I are likely to switch involving the two for periods of time.


What types of elements would you say are integral to your function?

I use particular paint colors, mainly straight from the tube to retain them thoroughly clean and shiny – my perceptions of color are bright, so I attempt to reproduce the colours as closely as possible and limit applying the duller colours of blended paint. A person color I perceive I would explain as a shimmering crimson-brown, so soon after much experimentation, I settled on employing copper paint to symbolize that notice. I mainly use Liquitex paints, as they can deliver me with the assortment of distinct colors I have to have – my go-to paint is Gentle Entire body, but I have also applied their Spray Paint, Acrylic Ink, and Acrylic Gouache, as very well as a assortment of their Qualified mediums to generate the regularity and translucency/opacity I want for unique items. When operating on canvas, strong stretcher bars are crucial – the Cass Artwork stretcher bars get the job done very well for me, arrive in a vast assortment of sizes, are straightforward to place collectively and are strong more than enough not to warp, which is very important for my geometric function!


Your murals for the Artwork on the Community levels of competition are an iconic element of the Merseyside landscape. What is it like to have your perform as a long term community artwork set up?

I was a bit overwhelmed when I received the level of competition! It was for the duration of my portion-time A-amount scientific studies, ahead of I’d taken the plunge to depart my past vocation. My electronic models were being utilized by the corporation who created all the panels for the tunnel refurbishment undertaking they screen-printed and fired the colours in vitreous enamel onto the stainless-steel supports. They were being installed more than ten several years ago but need to previous a lengthy time. My original Liverpool Composition and Wirral Composition paintings are, understandably, not for sale, but are continue to out there as confined-edition prints. I dwell on the Liverpool facet of the Mersey, but have many connections to Wirral, specifically by songs, so I get to vacation previous my artwork rather frequently!

Ultimately, what is in keep for you for the rest of 2022? Just about anything you can allow us in on?

In October, I will be Artist in Home for the Wirral Arts Festival 2022. I’ll be functioning with an orchestra and some other musical teams who are accomplishing at the competition, creating artwork in reaction to some of the parts they system to play in their concerts and then exhibiting the completed paintings at the concerts. In actuality, some of the works on paper in my present-day exhibition at Cass Art Liverpool had been manufactured during last year’s pageant.

Normally, I am content to be primarily acquiring new perform this yr, reflecting on and continuing from tips that arose from my 6-7 days solo exhibition and residency undertaking in an artist-led house in Liverpool past summer months. I am also beginning to appear in direction of some likely exhibition options in 2023 and 2024. There are often team exhibitions to apply for all through the 12 months, so I’ll see what else will come up!

Experience Encouraged?



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

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