Our current resident artist for the Artist Life web site is Barry Charles. And yes as previously mentioned on the home page my father is one of the driving forces behind deciding to start this project. By profession both my parents are school teachers and from an early age I was fortunate enough to be taken to galleries all over Europe and the UK as both my parents loved to travel with their jobs and during the 70’s and 80’s it was quite easy to so. Although I didn’t inherit my father’s or my sisters ability to draw and paint I have be lucky enough to obtain an acute eye for detail and an extreme passion for collecting art across many different styles and genres.

A bit about Barry

Barry was born in 1942 in Keynton, Victoria Australia. Barry is the son of a pharmacist George, and his mother Edna and the second youngest of four siblings Rod, Helen, Barry and Lex. From an early age all of Barry’s brothers and sisters appeared to be far more academic and sporting than Barry. Barry liked to paint, draw, sing and garden, on many occasions i can recall my grandfather George speaking fondly of the times Barry would be in his study designing or creating an addition to the family home whilst the other kids would be at the local tennis club improving their game.

Once Barry completed school he decided to leave home and travel the world, in the 1960’s traveling overland from Sydney all the way to London and then extensively through the middle East and Europe in a time when It was much safer to do so. Some of the experiences that he obtained from the freedom he enjoyed as a young man can still be seen in his work today. In the late sixties and early seventies Barry’s passion became Opera and as a budding young tenor he was fortunate enough to get to know Dame Joan Sutherland arguably Australia’s most famous Opera. In 1970 he met the love of his life my mother Christine Charles and decided for a time to focus on his teaching career and build a beautiful family with her, which they did resulting in 3 children Myself Andrew, Helen and Alexa.

In 1982 they immigrated to Australia from whence my father had originated and Barry began working as head of the art department at the Brighton Grammar Junior School. His love of children and teaching them how to paint, draw, sculp and sing was legendary within the school community and his design of sets for the annual school plays was a master class in itself of cubism, futurism and abstract modernism of which many parents today 15 years after he has retired still make requests to see if they can look at the old canvas’s that he used to prepare for the plays.
Since Barry retired in 2002 he has turned all of his energy into many painting projects some of which are displayed today. Barry’s style covers many aspects and genres of the world of art some of which will be familiar to you. His style is very unique yet quintessentially Australian. Barry has led the Artists Life and continues to do so but like so many other Australian Artists he hasn’t until now had the ability to show case his work to the world. Artists Life has been created to help Australian Artists like Barry receive the recognition they deserve whilst allowing the Australian Public to enjoy and appreciate previously unseen Australian Art.