Dale Devereux Barker
Dale Devereux Barker is recognised primarily for his use of reduction linocut printing. This is a process where ink is applied to a piece of linoleum and printed onto paper. Some parts of the lino are then cut away and the block re-printed in a different colour to build up layers of information.
Championed by Pablo Picasso who called this process ‘Suicide printing’ due to the unknown nature of the printed outcomes, this type of printmaking is exciting and full of surprises. Dale quite often eschews the tradition of making editions, preferring instead to experiment with creating unique impressions from the same block.
Dale’s work covers a wide range of topics, although many themes reccur: his swimming pictures stem from a lifelong involvement with the sport. He was a nationally ranked, top age group swimmer, and the switch from swimmer to artist took place when Dale had the opportunity to be an artist-in-residence at a swimming pool in 1989. This resulted in his first suite of swimming linocuts, which received critical and commercial acclaim. To date, Devereux has made roughly a hundred different images on this subject, and his ultimate ambition is to publish a book to celebrate twenty five years of combining printmaking with swimming.
“Dale Devereux Barker makes art out of all sorts of things, out of pictures, out of works, out of humour, out of frustration, out of sex, out of sitting on the beach. Since graduating from the Slade in 1986, he has developed a pictorial landscape which is distinctive in its combination of figurative imagery and complex layering of more abstract planes and textures scavenged from outside sources.”
-Taken from the essay 'What does one make pictures out of?' by Emma Hill in the Exhibition Catalogue 'Excessive Pleasures'.
Go to our Printmaking Techniques page for more information on how these prints are created
The works illustrated below are intended to give you a taste of what the gallery has to offer, please email us on info@cambridgegallery.co.uk or call us on 01223 324222 to find out which pieces are currently available.
