Born in New York, William Barkin studied drawing and oil painting with the American muralist and illustrator Alton S. Tobey, whom instilled in Barkin his love of representational art and the means to express it. He was encouraged to study and observe the world around him, as well as the works of past masters in painting. Barkin artistic influences ranging from Corot's early Italian plein air oil sketches to the starkness of Edward Hopper's scenes of America.
Barkin works from his studio in the Berkshire in Massachusetts. He has developed a style of painting in which he strives to articulate what he terms the "chiaroscuro of nature" He explains this as the amplification of opposites in a composition by suppressing middle values, the grays, and then heightening the darks and the lights. The end result produces a work with an interplay of many contrasts i.e. color, value (light and dark) and temperature (warm and cool).
William begins his paintings by carefully sketching the composition on to the canvas in pencil. From there he produces a fairly detailed monochromatic under painting in burnt sienna. This under painting when complete will have the deep darks and bright highlights fully established for the final painting. Because it is thinly painted, he is then able to build the color scheme up with multiple applications of thinly applied color called glazes. Eventually thick opaque paint is applied for the highlights leaving the shadows thin and transparent but with a deep luster. Barkin has currently transformed this technique in his application of pastels. By using brown toned paper to simulate the under painting color, William’s final pastels are simple colorful sketches reminiscent of his more involved oil paintings.
Barkin holds to the belief that the composition of a work art, that is its over all design, is much more important than the execution. |
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| "Venetian Reflections" |
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