HAYLEY BARKER

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.

They are paintings which explore and express an emotional or mental state, sometimes originating in a specific place or object, with an energy that recalls the visionary interiority of nineteenth century symbolists Redon and Moreau but a sensibility that feels more akin to the work of Bonnard and Vuillard.

In summer 2024, as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, Ingleby presented Barker’s first exhibition in Europe, The Ringing Stone. The exhibition was anchored by four majestic paintings of the artist’s garden across the course of the year, alongside seasonally specific depictions of other scenes and still lives that play into Barker’s balance of recording intimately personal, often ritualistic subjects that have an invitingly universal frame of reference.

Hayley Barker currently has a painting on view at Ingleby as part of our group exhibition, Wings of a Butterfly, which runs until 19 April 2025.

Courtesy Ingleby, Edinburgh.