BARNFIELD JULY9: B FLAT

 My favourite Barnfield painting features for this years digital birthday exhibition which will be available as ever on JULY9. https://youtu.be/O2iGffnIU6U

BARNFIELD: JULY9 (2021) - What would Fred have made of it

 Short film of thoughts for this year's BARNFIELD: JULY9 exhibition.  youtube 

Fred's Catalogue of works can be downloaded here

Fred's Blobography can be viewed here

Still working for you Fred. Happy Birthday.

BARNFIELD: JULY9 - (2020) "Stockhausen's Dream - A Lost Interview."

Over 11 years after it was recorded, a lost interview with Fred Barnfield was found. Fred had some great influence on my band SEISMICSECRET & following on from conversations that started in 2005 about Karlheinz Stockhausen, the quest of producing an endless piece of music was underway. The proper interview got lost due to technical problems but this was a forgotten back up. The music was used for the first JULY9 Exhibition in 2011 so maybe the right time to finish the story up:

youtube

Happy Birthday Fred. 

BARNFIELD: JULY9 (2019) - "Analogue Selfies."

Prior to the digital age, video resources were bulky & out of reach to a lot of the population. Cameras were loaded with film which had no instant playback - so it was a case of taking the picture & a while later the prints would be developed - often disappointing. Instant playback & the amount of photos that can be taken on a modern camera mean that we can take hundreds of images, switch to video mode & check within seconds for quality. These 9 works represent a much slower process: Barnfield painted himself painting - in the same way that artists have done for millenia. Self portraits could be called Analogue Selfies in today's parlance, so that's what this year's exhibition will be called.


Happy Birthday Fred.

The mystery of the Blobs.

Fred's blob pictures were complex on a number of levels. Paradoxically there was great simplicity at the core of the concept. Over the years he experimented laterally with different forms. This booklet he produced gives some indication of his original form of  BLOBOLOGY .

BARNFIELD: JULY9 (2018) - "Poppies"

It being the 70th Anniversary of WW1, this years exhibition is of Fred's 5 paintings of "Poppies."

Fred left instructions for viewing these five works which he painted as part of his deep feeling of loss for those who died in WW1. After hearing about the science of how the optic nerve works, he explained to me that staring at the paintings intently for some time (maybe a minute) then closing the eyes immediately would result in Red Poppies being “seen” via an optical illusion & reverse coloured backgrounds. There are a few other works that he continued this experiment with & it’s an interesting game to play with any work of art for want of a quiet game to play in galleries. Fred enjoyed the odd very involved practical joke & I wondered if it was all a ruse to get an extra minutes silence out of the viewing public. What do you think?

View the paintings here:

Happy Birthday Fred.

PS. Fans of Fred's Art may be interested in an auction of some of his works next week.

Fred Barnfield - Blobography & Catalogue of Works

Fred died in July of 2013 a short time before his birthday. In the years before his death he worked on his autobiography - I called it his "Blobiography" - which I helped him with. After he died, I started the work of finishing it in the manner that he wished for. 

We'd talked initially around 2007 about having an electronic work that would have all the text that he wanted, linking to photographs of the relevent paintings & works. Fred went away & wrote his autobiography & took a mass of photographs & scans, also writing notes for his own exhibition notes. Thus, he wrote the same thing essentially twice in different ways. Accordingly I have 2 files - the written account & the Catalogue of Works.

It has taken me longer than I anticipated to put this all together in a format that is both comprehensive & accessible. 

Click here for the Blobography.

To view the annual JULY9 Exhibitions, click here

The Catalogue of Works is 1813 pages. Please email me if you would like to view it: