Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 23

INTERVIEW

life

“As the music complements
the art and the poetry, the idea
is it opens your eyes to things
we do unwittingly,”

and in Man in Blue, the other work to
be selected from the 2,700 entries to the
exhibition, celebrates all that is good about
old-fashioned painting.
When you meet Judith you find she exudes
all the vibrancy and energy that has made
her so prolific and versatile. She has been

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exhibiting and accepting commissions since
the age of 18, making headlines in her
local Middlesex newspaper at that age for a
painting, and, now with a distinguished and
accomplished reputation she maintains a
hold on the popular imagination – she won
the Island Art Society People’s Choice Award
two years running. Yet while she tackles
issues which invoke sentiment and emotion
– mothers with babies, wild animals and
human relationships – she never lapses into
the twee or fey.
In October Judith closed the Bloomsbury
gallery in Ryde which she had run for 16
years. Demand for her work has led her to
devote more time to painting though she is
slightly sidetracked by renovating a Grade
II listed house which will eventually give
her the ‘fabulous studio’ she needs. She
describes this as a transitional year. “Once
I’m working full time I don’t know where it
will take me.”
Presumably it will take her to further
plaudits and acknowledgement. In 2003
she unwittingly entered the Turner Prize
(her daughter submitted a picture without
Judith’s knowledge), a reaction to the
growth of severed cows and rotting meat
as art – which opened new doors. Yet she
herself is ready to embrace all corners in
the art world. Indeed, she is about to start
on a collaboration with her son James on
an installation which unites his music and
her painting and poetry, under the broad
heading Perception and Communication.
“As the music complements the art and
the poetry, the idea is it opens your eyes
to things we do unwittingly,” says Judith.
She talks about the negativity we project –
when even asking if someone takes sugar in
their tea is likely to elicit the response ‘Who
wants to know?’. James, so in tune with his
mother’s thinking, notes how the actors on

Eastenders are so embroiled in the gloom
of the storylines their faces become locked
in those expressions. By homing in on our
tendencies to pre-judge and assume, mother
and son aim to draw out positive values.
“This life is a learning game,” says Judith.
“All one can hope to do in this world is to
try and project a power of good energy.
Everybody has talents, some not uncovered,
which is so sad. The job of talent is to spread
a positive energy, to make people think in a
good way. Sometimes that means doing a
really sad picture, because it touches a life.”
Siblings in Black Hats is indeed dark, yet
indisputably funny. Renowned critic Brian
Sewell said it was his favourite, his choice of
the exhibition – that it had made him laugh.
And this is Judith Barton’s skill, to put the
truth we all recognise onto canvas. In her
Man in Blue the saxophone player is totally
at one with his instrument, depicting that
music is the essence of man. “Humanity
and musicality are fore