Joan Barker
Artist Statement
Resume
I have ideas I need to see. Through art, I move responses to current events, memories, emotions and dreams onto paper, canvas, cloth or cardboard. Substrates determine their physical form. Materials and techniques ignite the process. Marks appear and disappear; tumult. An abstraction or documentary photograph is never finished. Context is an ever-changing influence. Over time, each viewers’ unique perception completes the picture. A work of art may or may not hold profound truth but is always part of the search. I want my pictures to be more than me. I want to be ever changing like the art I make.
Joan Barker employs traditional and experimental methods in her painting and photography. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists’ Fellowship, The Village Voice Photography Grant and two Center for Photography at Woodstock Fellowships. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions including OK Harris, NYC, Photographers’ Gallery, London, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY.
Joan’s work is included in numerous collections such as The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, and The Dorsky Museum, New Paltz.
Joan completed her MFA at SUNY New Paltz where she taught and received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching for the academic year 2013-2014. Joan’s work for the Fresh Air Fund is frequently featured in The New York Times.