Mike Barr

Mike Barr was born in the UK and came to Australia in 1970. He is a South Australian based artist who believes paintings should be felt as well as seen. He started his painting life with beachscapes almost exclusively, but entered the rainy cityscape road about 17 years ago, developing a more abstract format in his work.

Mike Barr has been the recipient of over 100 awards for his art during his career, and he is now a sought after judge for art awards, both here and interstate. He was recently invited by the Art Gallery of South Australia to demonstrate his approach to depicting cityscapes during the very successful Clarice Beckett Exhibition in 2021. His work is featured in the award winning Maree Cootes publication, The Art of Being Melbourne, and he has been a monthly columnist in the UK art magazine, The Artist, since 2001.

The sky is Barr’s muse. He works en plein air, mastering expansive landscapes and enormous skies. He has become adept at capturing the mood and poetry of weather, translating light and form into tonal values and shapes – planes of colour that build an awareness of a scene through atmospheric sensibility rather than a studied depiction of detail.