WILL BARKER
What intrigues me as an artist is to create visually striking murals that blend the lines of fantasy and history in a familiar wild western setting that I find inspirational. I enjoy painting Native Americans, cowboys, outlaws and animals and everything that links them to a story I want to tell on the canvas. Being based in Colorado, I am stimulated by the surrounding iconic landscapes and history of the region. The aim of my work is to weave together those rugged, yet poetic themes that are found in the Wild West with more established western art subjects, but with the intention of finding a way to push the boundaries of those traditional motifs through constant artistic exploration. My goal is to fuse the love of theses tropes with personal reflection, humor, and nostalgia and even dip into a little surrealism, all things that I use to connect to my work. I work primarily with spray paint because it offers me the same palette and style I use with my studio practice to produce large scale murals resembling a fine art painting.
Will has had an unconventional trip to become a full-time artist based in Denver, CO. He played football for the University of Virginia as an offensive lineman and eventually onto a short, but active career in the NFL, playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins, before pursuing his passion for painting on his move to the west. While working on his development as an artist, Will spent most of his early years in Colorado as a production manager at a downtown Denver distillery among other jobs. The pandemic gave Will the opportunity to focus all his time on his growth as an artist, including his push to more public work in the Denver mural scene, and as the jobs and opportunities continued to pile up, he happily decided not to return to the beverage industry and pursue his art full-time. When he is not in the studio, Will is producing large scale western inspired murals. His paintings can be found here on his website as well as various group and solo shows around Denver and his murals can be spotted all over Colorado and as far reaching as California, Nevada, Georgia and Chicago.
