BIOGRAPHY
BARRY KIRK was born in Kent in 1933 and educated at Westminster
School, Canterbury School of Art and The Royal College of Art,
where he studied etching, in particular, under ]ulian Trevelyan.
Subsequently, he taught at both Canterbury and Guildford
Schools of Art, eventually developing a successful career on
the administrative side rising to Principal of the College.
THROUGHOUT THE 19605 Barry Kirk continued painting and
printmaking as personal pursuits, first concentrating on urban
subjects, often with figures: interiors. markets, builders’ yards and
back gardens. Later he developed an indifidual mode of relief-
pajnting on canvas,  modern synthetic media, a technique
which led for a while to fully threeclimensional sculpture.
FEELING CONSTRJCTED by the lirnitations of the synthetic media,
during the 19805 Kirk returned to oil painting and watercolour, a
development which coincided with a preference for subjects drawn
From the countryside, fuelled by many extended visits to the north
Norfolk coastline, which would become a major source of subject
matter. Only a chance recommendation, unsolicited by the painter
and pursued with some reluctance, led to representation by the
Francis Kyle Gallery in 1993.
l1\' 1994 BARRY KIRK took part first in the Gallery’s theme exhibition
The Piem Yiail, contributing a large composition reinterpreting
Piero della Francesczfs Nativity, in which the Biblical participants
take flight into Egypt, giving Way as they leave to a carpet of
prophetically symbolic flowers. In 1995 he participated in Per Una
Selva Oscura: artists take to zhejbrest, a celebration of the experience
of woodland prompted by the enigmatic opening of Dante’s Inferno
and in 1997 contributed to The Saxon Shore. The present exhibition
is Barry Kirk’s first major one»man London exhibition of paintings
and drawings.