108 × 84 in
 in
 cm
$19,500
Through short brushstrokes and bold colours clustered across a vast canvas, Barkley depicts a riotous field that seems to be both at ease in its abstraction and reaching gently toward a landscape sentiment. Entering the Presence evokes a sense of calm and feels true to the artist’s lifelong passion for painting the natural. The viewer can envision they are stepping to the foot of the small pool just visible in the bottom right of the canvas, gazing up through fractured lenses at the autumnal reds, yellows, and mulberry colours of a boreal forest, where the only sounds are the rustles and chirps of birds and their own footfalls.
Artist Statement
My work is influenced by nature, cosmogony, existential questions, and a love of painting. I start with a conceptual idea but the process directs the completion. I examine consciousness by using abstraction. That which exists within the human psyche is interconnected with what is happening in nature. Our ideas about existence affect who we think we are and how we interact with each other and the environment.
| Medium | Painting |
| Signature | Signed |
| Frame | Unframed |
| Condition | very good |
| Seller | Private |
| Location | Vancouver, Canada |
| Provenance | Private collection, Vancouver. |
Canadian artist and scholar John Barkley began painting and drawing as a boy. He was encouraged by his father, an artist with whom he went on painting trips in the Ottawa valley. A practicing professional artist since 1996, Barkley experiments with thick paint application and varied brushstrokes to create abstract landscapes that evoke both a quiet contemplation of nature but also its chaotic excess and mystery.
Today, Barkley creates dense, layered, and purely abstract paintings inspired by his studies in philosophy, psychology, and religion. In organic shapes, bright colors, and dark voids, he interrogates the psychic terrain of human consciousness.
In his studio, a conceptual point of entry is soon replaced by intuition and experiment as he ponders on how to depart from a mode of modern secular monophasic consciousness into an experience of interconnected consciousness with nature and all living things. What can we tell about human existence—its place within the greater scheme of life, but also how our views about our place in the world impact our relationship with the surrounding environment?
Taken together his work reflects a new hermeneutic of art based upon the work of Jung, Tillich, and Heidegger. With a well-developed vocabulary of abstraction and symbolic forms, his paintings examine the relationship between art, cosmogony, and the contemporary human psyche and consciousness, while his studies in philosophy and theology set out to challenge conventional wisdom and advocate the adoption of a new mythology.
Source: https://www.couturegalleri.com/
Recent Solo Exhibitions
2023 John Barkley, Galerie de Bellefeuille, Toronto, ON
2022 The Cosmos Within, Masters Gallery, Calgary, AB
2017 Imanence, Galerie St Laurent + Hill, Ottawa, ON
2017 Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, QC
2015 Galerie St-Laurent + Hill, Ottawa, ON
Recent Group Exhibitions
2022 Studied Tranqulity, Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON
2016 2014 – PAF-FAS, Farrellton, QC, Canada
2015 Harmony of Nature: Couture Galleri, Stockholm, Sweden
2013 Wakefield Community center, 25th Anniversary exhibit of Chelsea Wakefield Art tour, Chelsea, QC
2012 Severance, Wakefest Radisson, Wakefield, Le Peche
Collections
City of Ottawa Art Collection
Air Canada, Ottawa International Airport
Department of External Affairs
Washington Bank
Bombardier Canada
The Region of Ottawa-Carleton
Maple Ridge Capital
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