Born in Montreal in 1962, Daniel Barkley holds a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University. His many solo and group exhibitions include shows across Canada and the United States (Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, New York, Santa-Fe, San Francisco, Mexico City…). In 2004, the Musée des arts contemporain des Laurentides hosted a retrospective of his works, and in 2007, University of Toronto’s Justina M. Barnicke Gallery assembled and presented a collection of works defining his career to date. Recently, Barkley was short-listed for the Kingston Prize, Canada’s portrait competition; his watercolours have also won top prizes at national competitions, including the Canadian Society of Painters Watercolour’s A.J. Casson Medal 2002 and 2012.
Daniel explains his work by saying, “I create my paintings as narratives. Sometimes the narrative is clear, the action direct, an interpretation can be made easily. In other paintings the story and it’s meaning is not always discernable and the interpretation is left open. I see the people in my paintings as characters within these narratives. A character that begins his story in one painting may find a denouement in a later piece. As a result of my attempts to streamline the narrative, to rid the painting of extraneous elements, the actors often appear nude. Clothes denote social class, profession, period, gender, age, etc. By eliminating them, paring down the mise-en-scene, the interpretation of the narrative is broadened to hopefully include the viewer’s own speculations.”