Page 53 - The Hunt - Fall 2024

son Andrew were the biggest influences on my style of art,” says Barr, who lives in the countryside in Reading. “I sort of combine the two in technique, brushwork, sense of composition and imagery, along with a healthy dose of superrealism I picked up from Rackstraw Downes in the 1970s and ’80s.”
For Barr, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera serves
as his travelling sketch pad, capturing thousands
of images of trees, mountains, fields, crops, old farmhouses and outbuildings—whatever catches his eye. He first searches for an anchor image, then for another and another, assembling a composite to make a comprehensive whole of a beautiful landscape, existing only in aggregate. “I compose on the computer,” he says. “I’ll have an idea for a final painting, and I’ll
piece together the various elements from the photos I’ve collected.”
Many painters will employ a photo as a starting point, then mentally Photoshop that image. The technique intrigues Linda Harris Reynolds, a portrait artist who moved into the historic Howard Pyle studio in Wilmington two years ago after
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