Barry Driver:
Nelson
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Barry is a self-taught artist based in Nelson. He describes his work as emotionally inspired abstracts as he aims to get himself into a given emotional state before producing a rapid series of works with the aim of hitting that rare and precious sweet spot between order and chaos. He is fascinated by an artwork's ability to mean different things to different people.
Barry chooses tools such as credit cards over brushes because he finds they allow greater freedom of expression. He works quickly in order to achieve a variety of mixing, scraping and layering effects while the paint is still partially wet.
Art has no meaning without an observer, to Barry. The art in a work is not, therefore, in the skills or techniques employed, but in what they capture and how it affects people. For a person to love a painting, it needs to offer a spark to their imagination and be open to their own interpretation, thereby allowing it to become part of them.