Bob Barker
Portraying the joys of Yorkshire Life | 2023

Bob Barker is one of our most popular artists; one of the reasons for this is his use of nostalgia in his paintings, which warms us all as it takes us back to the freedom of being young. He’s continued this with the Summer 2023 works from his From Yesterday to Here collection, ‘Tiddlers’ and ‘Whacky Racers’, which re-create his own joyous, playful Yorkshire childhood.

Although Bob has been painting for many years, he still embraces the continuous learning process, pushing the qualities of oil paint to gain knowledge of how the medium can be manipulated in a myriad of techniques to create visual effects. Bob’s style uses a limited colour palette which enables viewers to understand the nuances of the colours he uses, creating an infinite tonal variation and enhanced contrast. This is what gives the images their very subtle colour shift in their monochromatic tones.

‘Tiddlers’ reminds Bob of when he and his friends used to visit a local river to catch sticklebacks. “Most of them had two spines on their back but sometimes they had more,” Bob says. “We found one with nine spines down its back and we thought we had discovered a new species, something really special, but it turns out they were like us, just tiddlers! I’ve painted the piece itself by changing the palette slightly, with subtle, nuanced colours of lilacs and sepia tones, making it a little bit different.”

‘Whacky Racers’ is about the fun memories created by playing with your friends in the neighbourhood. Bob says: “As kids we made our own fun, usually outside and usually up to no good. “Occasionally you would find a set of old pram wheels; if they had one axle with big wheels and one axle with small wheels they were almost as valuable as gold dust. These would be nailed to a couple of planks of wood with some string at the front to help with steering, to make a go-kart, or bogeys as we called them. “After a couple of races with other bogeys, bits would start to fall off so there was always a roadside repair shop needed with a big hammer and loads of nails. We spent weeks building these contraptions and when we all set off together down the nearest hill, we were indeed Whacky Racers!”.