Hayley Barker

Hayley Barker is an American painter.

Biography Hayley Barker was born in Oregon in 1973. She received her BA from the University of Oregon, and her MA & MFA in Intermedia from the University of Iowa. She has had solo exhibitions at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; SHRINE New York, NY and BozoMag, Los Angeles, CA. She has participated in group shows at Acquavella, New York, NY; Harper's, East Hampton, NY; Nicodim, Los Angeles, CA; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and SHRINE New York, NY, among others. Barker has been featured in several publications including Artforum, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Forbes, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, LA Weekly, and W Magazine. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Born in Dallas, Oregon, and raised in Salem, Oregon, in a progressive, intellectual household, Barker recalls her father writing poetry and horror stories, and being surrounded by books on Dada and Duchamp. Barker describes the work she created in her 20s as dramatic, symbolic, and ritualistic—an attempt to transform pain into something between beauty and horror.

Themes Hayley Barker's paintings feature intimate depictions of everyday landscape that explore themes of spirituality, nature, and transformation. In an interview with Paul Maziar from Bomb Magazine, she shares that she strives to produce scenes "not how I see, but how I feel, and how that affects what I see". In The Ringing Stone exhibition at Ingleby, Edinburgh (15 June–31 August 2024), she explores lunar and seasonal cycles used in the Wheel of the Year.

Influences During her education, Barker drew inspiration from Ana Mendieta and the Riot Grrrl movement.

Her 2024 solo exhibition "The Ringing Stone" in Edinburgh, Scotland was deemed "One of the most beautiful shows" in the Edinburgh Art Festival by Wallpaper* reviewer Hugo Macdonald. The exhibition's titular painting depicts a prehistoric carved stone on the island of Tiree.

In response to earlier work in 2011, art critic Sue Taylor reviewed Barker's show "Cathedrals" in "Art in America": Taylor compared Barker's paintings to the work of Georgia O'Keeffe and Vincent van Gogh. Barker's "Cathedrals" is inspired by the childhood diary of Opal Whiteley, who had visionary, spiritual experiences but was later diagnosed as schizophrenic: In art, as in religion and madness, consciousness can be other than ordinary. Barker strives to imagine and approximate this deranged susceptibility, listening attentively for voices in the wind.

2024 "The Ringing Stone," Ingleby Gallery 2023 "Last Morning at El Centro," CVG Foundation, Beijing 2023 "Laguna Castle," Night Gallery, Los Angeles 2022 "Bozo House," BozoMag, Los Angeles 2022 "The Spider," SHRINE, NYC 2021 "Incense", The Armory Art Fair with Shrine, NYC 2020 "The Grass is Blue", SHRINE, NYC 2020 ALAC, Bozo Mag, LA 2019 "LATE BLOOMER," Bozo Mag, LA 2018 "Hayley Barker: Open Studio," Bozo Mag, LA 2018 "AMPM," Holding Contemporary/Williamson Knight, Portland, OR 2017 "New Paintings" Bozo Mag/Abode, LA

Group exhibitions Source:

2024 "Afterglow: A Collaboration with Night Gallery," Acquavella Gallery, Palm Beach 2024 "Connections: Wingate Studio at David Krut Projects" 2024 "Arcadia and Elsewhere," James Cohan 2023 "Clairvoyance," SHRINE NYC 2023 "PUBLIC PRIVATE," Pond Society, Shanghai 2023 "Death of an Outsider," SHRINE, Los Angeles 2022: "Unnatural Nature: Post-Pop Landscapes," Acquavella Gallery, NYC 2022: "Shrubs," Night Gallery, Los Angeles 2021: "The Rock," BozoMag in collaboration with Pocket Studio, Los Angeles 2021 "36 Paintings," Harper's East Hampton 2021 "The Language of Flowers," Reyes Finn, Detroit, MI 2020 "Eartha" Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR 2020 "Untitled, (But Loved)" Bosse & Baum, London 2020 NADA: This is fair 2020 "New Beginnings..." Nicodim, LA 2020 Connections: Shrine, NYC 2020 "Conscious Collaboration with Spirit," SOIL Gallery, Seattle 2019 "Summer Formal," La Loma Projects, LA 2018 "Take Care," GAS, LA 2018 "The Divine Joke," Anita Rogers Gallery, NY