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Barry Lorne was born in the small Northern Mill town of
Lancaster England in 1961 and immigrated to Canada with his
family in 1974. He received his bachelor’s degree in
fine art at the University of Lethbridge in 1996 and
currently lives in Calgary Alberta were he maintains a full
time studio. His work has been exhibited across Canada and
in the United States. He is currently working on his British
Working-Class Tribal series based on his remembered culture
he left behind as a child and his adopted culture where he
now resides.
"When you are an immigrant there is a sense that you do
not belong and with that there is a sense of being a fraud.
My culture is not the culture where I presently reside nor
is it the culture I left behind at the age of twelve; my
culture is the one of memory and invented history that I
apply in my paintings. Unlike words laden with meaning or
language defined by context I chose to use paint to relate
what I have to say. Painting as a form of communication is
capable of life beyond the author.
With my current paintings there is a sense of
detachment, a need to belong, each figure, color and
material selection defines that which does not exist. My
paintings are an invented reality familiar only in the
painting context, the validity of each panel is only
apparent in the skill of the painter and how the paint is
applied. That is not to say that I am not genuine nor that
my paintings are fabricated rather it is to say that each
painting is a true representation and therefore a true
personal communicative device as a painting.
My current series from my British Working-Class Tribal
paintings depicts my remembered memories of growing up in
the Northern Milltown of Lancaster England. Each panel in
the Tribal series has an iconic reference to a memory of
mine as a child living in the tenement housing projects of
Lancaster and the culture of my remembered tribe. Dogs were
a prevalent peripheral reality in the tenement neighborhood
and are depicted as such in my paintings by using them as
contextual compositional devices through color, shape and
tactile variants. The figures in my paintings are emblematic
iconic tablets of gestured stereotyped personalities and
fringe characters. Each character in the painted storyboard
is given a distinct identity through the manipulation of the
materials, color and placement of each form. It is my intent
to construct a cultural environment I can live within and
share with others."
- Barry
Lorne, 2006
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