Jonathan Barber

Jonathan Barber is a contemporary Scottish artist based in Edinburgh. In 2008, he graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with first class honours. Today he continues to create and exhibit and is also committed to teaching art and design.

Barber addresses the themes of life, death, hope and beauty and tries to marry them with the paradoxical dynamics of hope and despair. He studies the interaction between Man and space, depicting subjects that are often consumed by the environment surrounding them. Certain motifs from Japanese serigraphy and Victorian wallpaper have greatly influenced his art. Stencils are an ideal of beauty for him and play a major role in his compositions. Indeed, they float on the surface of his canvases and intensify their depth, allowing the spectator to hone his eye and discover a clear line between the surface and the stencils that are superimposed on it. Barber refers to natural beauty to justify the use of this process. It is with this view in mind that his recent work fits. By painting vast areas of darkness synonymous with fracture and despair, Barber wishes to express a tension in which hope and beauty also exist.  

He works on light, shadows, movement and forms... He has recently focused on abstraction and depicting landscapes on canvas and board as well as more intricate studies on paper. He tries to recreate an atmospheric atmosphere by playing with the colours of his palette. Jonathan Barber uses dark and heavy tones that give his paintings a certain depth and sense of distance. He uses colour shades as compositional tools to emphasize the perspective of his works.

He has exhibited in England, London, Bath and Bristol, as well as in Scotland in Edinburgh.