Listen to Proudly Zimbabwean make up artist Kelli Barker in a thoughtful and well informed interview, with Farai of Story Untold Zimbabwe, ahead of our art exhibition “Burnt Offerings, Re-Invention, Taking Flight”
Kelli’s relationship with her fellow creatives and her body art, film or make up models is resonant with warmth and compassion- putting people at ease and creating firm friendships is her guiding strength, allowing her to then freely create her magic !
Kelli re created her own body-crusted in glowing red beads and mosaic, for the opening of our ‘Burbt Offerings’ exhibition at Pikicha gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
There’s no fire without some smoke- so this is the flip side of part of my huge canvas featured in previous posts -a smoky haze scripted with the burnt frass floating after a burn … using my palm frond calligraphy tools and sweeping my hearth always with my trusty mutsvairo.
What am I writing -the secret is refreshing- Asemic writing allows me, and the viewer, to dream into the story
Elements of cave paintings or even Chinese calligraphy float through the smoke haze onto my canvas
Mark making with torn Lala palm fronds – soft yet scratchy nibs are tactile and easy to write with- very satisfying…
Here is the full huge painting:
There is no smoke without fire – 180 cm wide
two sides to the same story – there’s no smoke without fire and vice versa
Taking palm fronds. Sweeping the earth free of footprints free of yesterday.
Gone are thoughts … worries, regrets. creating a blank canvas potential just for today
Lin Barrie
Working towards an exhibition is always energizing
Sweeping Clean!
Burnt Offerings is a recurring theme for me..
I have always been fascinated by fire.
It has a terrible beauty; it’s dual nature is destructive and creative at the same time…
For years, since we suffered two successive domestic fires in our lives, one in Harare and one at our bush lodge, I have been driven to collect the burnt memorabilia of my life; to create an offering of artworks in response to that experience….. Burnt Offerings.
Sweeping clean, using a traditional broom, a mutsvairo, made from Lala palm fronds, to clear my hearth, my canvas, to create new work- lay down some fire….
Of course there’s no smoke without fire so I start with flames – acrylic and oil bar – abstract expression of my creative fire burning ..
I cut and tear palm fronds from my mutsvairo to create calligraphic pens to write with – such satisfying scribing tools
Asemic writing, secret writing- it means whatever you want it to mean- and I find it deeply relaxing and empowering as I write thoughts deeply hidden without having to actually form words!
Scraffiti, graffiti, calligraphy- Secret stories laid at my feet, fueling my creative fire !
My canvas is #onfire #flaming and #makingmarks #writing #scripting #scribing with #palmfronds from my #mutsvaire #broom makes me happy!
Of course there’s two sides to every story and this huge canvas I am working on has a flip side- two sides to every coin and no smoke without fire- so the second side of my canvas will be smoke (and mirrors?!)
The full fire painting -180 cm wide
How will I display it?! watch out for the next post…..
Well! What do my art, Rihanna, The Met Gala, Coco Chanel, and Georgia O’Keeffe have in common?
One of my favourite art newsletter, Artnet news has this, about one of my favourite artists…:
Flowers, whether camellias or Jimson Weed, Paper roses or Moonflowers, it’s flowers, art, dress design, music and poetry all the way…..
Heres my poem and my large impressionist floral art, deeply inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe,
“Moonflower”
Moonflower.
Memories.
Midnight
in the garden
of good and evil.
Deeply scented,
fragmented whispers
trickle from the embrace
of the fluted cup
in velvet African darkness.
Enticing, alluring,
softly unsettling.
Lin Barrie
Shared in an article in the Zimbabwean Gardener magazine last year, then on display at The Dulux Zimbabwe showroom
Now “Moonflower” is on display at the Borrowdale Brooke Golf Club, an apt setting for the painting, as in this very estate we walk at night enveloped by the gorgeous summer floral scent of these glorious but poisonous plants …!
Lin Barrie, Flamingo Flight, All Things Connected, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 200 cm –
This painting is a portrayal of Flamingoes in flight, celebrating the biodiversity of ecosystems, especially on the West Coast of Africa, and the inter-connectedness of all things…
the web of life, the fragility of life…
All things connected…. my mantra is biodiversity, ecosystems, one world, our earth….
Our responsibility as artists, as conservationists, is to look our fellow earth inhabitants in the eye and embrace the multitude of life around us.
I have been inspired to paint these flying pink perfections, having watched flamingoes fly past me at eye level from the high Chilo Safari Lodge deck overlooking the great Save River in Zimbabwe, (en route from Mozambique to Namibia I would guess, and stopping over at the ephemeral pans of Gonarezhou National Park).
The Fine Art Gallery, Swakopmund, Namibia, is featuring my art in their Wildlife Art Exhibition online, and favourite works can be voted for!
so please do follow the link and browse the artworks…
I’d love you to vote for your favourite public choice award!! Clients, family and friends, do vote either by sending an email with your name or by using the contact form via our webpage https://art-in-namibia.com/calling-list/
(The artist with the most votes wins a N$ 5.000.- as well as the lucky winner from the draw who can win an additional N$ 5.000…. and this all creates great support for the Namibian Wildlife Projects of the Peace Park Foundation, especially if the artwork sells, as a large commission goes straight to the Projects)
Peace Parks work tirelessly in Africa for biodiversity…
As an example, Peace Parks are supported by Blue Action Fund in Mozambique – preserving habitat for marine mammals, fish birds such as flamingoes…which then fly on to Namibia…all things connected… https://www.linkedin.com/company/blueactionfund/
Communities coexisting with wildlife are the only way forward for truly sustainable conservation.
Often on the Save River near Mahenye Village, I watch colourful, hardy Nguni cattle drinking at sunset and giving way to elephants; ladies washing their vibrant clothes in the late afternoon sun on the shore of an African river where African wild dogs roam…
The river is the porous divide between domestic and wild-a fascinating and challenging overlapping of two ways of life.
My two paintings are complementary to each other, reflecting the need for integration, for understanding of wildlife/domestic stock issues in sensitive Zimbabwean ecosystems; celebrating the importance of vital community support for wildlife, for a healthy biodiverse climate.
All Things Connected in the web of life.
Lin Barrie, Nguni Sunset, acrylic on loose canvas, 55 x 90 cm
Lin Barrie, Painted Wolves Sunset, acrylic on loose canvas, 55 x 90 cm
Colour in nature inspires me and no lovelier colour than this Dulux colour of the year Wild Wonder:
So many plants do not successfully flower, set seed and germinate unless rejuvenating veld fire has passed over them -an analogy for life I always feel- it’s the trials of life that hone and fine us to our better selves ….
here’s a detail from my painting:
My large painting called Wild Wonder Pincushion is ablaze with the peachy oranges and flashes of fiery red that stud the veld when these leucospermums are in bloom.
Here’s the full artwork:
my poem:
The Wild Wonder of fynbos…
The fire-honed colour of sunsets
and earth…
Africa is abuzz
in all it’s pincushion glory.
Lin Barrie
I have placed this painting and it’s companion into the Dulux Zimbabwe showroom …a great creative collaborative space in Harare.
My painting Wild Wonder Abstract is a joyful swirl of colour celebrating the wild world, the wide world, we live in
Underpinned by Wild Wonder Colour of the Year – this painting embraces the Buzz palette of warm peachy tones that call to the very bees to come visit… succulent colour!
Tubular bells, tiny trumpets. Falling flowers fill my jacaranda dreams like lilac rainfall.
Drifting across the Wild Wonder of my self made horizon.
Lin Barrie
Inspired by Dulux colour of the year Wild Wonder, I am partnering with Dulux Zimbabwe for the Floral Art Show by the national association of garden clubs zimbabwe.
Many zimbabwean artists are displaying artworks at this show and Zimbabwe’s floral artists will be tasked to interpret each artwork in a floral arrangement!
An exciting #creativecollaboration of #floralart #paintings #flowerarrangements #plantgrowers #zimbabweangardeners #aloesociety
Found Objects artist Johnson Zuze creates an owl -zizi
Birds Flight Wings and Feathers-
I have submitted an assemblage draped canvas artwork to the national gallery of Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe Visual Arts Awards annual show, titled “A Kite with a Broken String has all the Sky”
With a play on words between the kite one flies as a child and the yellow billed kite, a raptor in our Zimbabwean skies.
Pikicha gallery curator Kuda and myself in front of my art assemblage at the National gallery of Zimbabwe
here is a detail…
More of my “flight” and bird theme art will be featured in a forthcoming exhibition this year, with works by myself, my daughter Kelli Barker, make up artist, and Johnson Zuze, found objects artist -taking place at Pikicha Gallery in Harare
meanwhile here are some fascinating oral tradition bird stories from Zimbabwe…
I have always loved sketching and watching our Southern Ground hornbills in the Save Valley Conservancy and Gonarezhou National Park, and my head is even more full of Ground hornbills these last few weeks!
I have been bumping into flights of them wherever I go in this gorgeous thick bush, and every morning as the sun rises, their sonorous, booming calls beckon me out of sleep. Just this morning, I sat on our front verandah and saw two of them fly across the far mopani tree line, and even at that distance their white and black wings bounced out of all the green foliage in the early morning light.
Lin Barrie, Hornbills I, acrylic on loose canvas, 104 x 179 cm ……
Two weeks ago I stopped and watched a flock of five, our local troop that hangs out around our house, the four adults harassed by a demanding juvenile with grey throat pouch and plaintive voice, “Feed me, feed me, please!” They all flew up right in front of me against a backdrop of steel grey rainclouds, late afternoon sun shining on the white translucence of their wings, and their red pouches flashing…..
An inspiration to paint, and the fact that they keep flying for me wherever I am seeing them, suggests that I need to think “flight” in my painting – abstract black and red against steel blue grey grounds…
Even describing this to you makes me want to rush into my studio and get out my palette knife!
wine and wild dogs 