VAM galleries including this work:
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft | Young at Art || VAM Home

“I think wood is beautiful.... If I paint it, it could be made out of plastic.... I think paint robs the wood of really being wood,” asserted artist Linvel Barker. While carved wood is often painted in traditional folk art, Barker instead focused on the shape of his carvings. He sanded his wooden pieces to a delicate perfection. As these carved cats demonstrate, the viewer is able to enjoy the simple, clean lines of the figures and focus on the shape of the carvings rather than the color.

About the Artist

Linvel Barker left Kentucky in the early 1950s for northern Indiana, where he worked for more than 30 years as a maintenance technician at a steel mill. In the mid-1980s, he retired and returned to his wife’s home community of Isonville, Kentucky. A preacher, he tended to the small congregation of a church he took on as pastor, but he felt very uneasy without the familiar routine and sense of purpose that he had been used to during his working life. At the coaxing of his neighbor, folk artist Minnie Adkins, he tried carving wood and discovered that he enjoyed it. The first few pieces he produced were soon bought by collectors, and wood carving quickly became a daily activity.

Barker’s carvings are easily identified by their streamlined shape; their delicate, thin legs; and the fine, smooth finish treatment he gave to the blond, unpainted basswood from which he made them. Barker’s wife, Lillian, helped him in the finish stage of his work, but also began to paint on her own.

Linvel stopped carving after Lillian died in 1997. Because of ill health, he was confined to a nursing home in 2000, where he lived until his death in 2004. Although he worked as an artist for a relatively brief period of time, Barker’s unique sculptures are sought after and valued by collectors of contemporary folk art.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Describe these three pieces. Explain how Linvel Barker used the elements of art in his cat carvings. Why do you think Barker chose to carve three cats? What is your opinion of the pieces? Do they look like cats or convey characteristics that you think of when you think of cats? Be sure to support your answer with specific details that reference the artwork.

Activities: Barker is best known for his carvings of animals—a common subject matter in both fine art and craft. Research some early examples of animals in artwork, such as the cave paintings of bison in Altamira, Spain. Gather photographs of various kinds of real animals. Use the photographs to draw contour drawings of animals, focusing on the outside lines of each animal’s shape. Draw several contour drawings on one page, creating a line-drawing composition.

Link

See a carving of a buffalo by Linvel Barker at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft web site.
[www.kentuckyarts.org/exhibition.cfm?stepaction=category.cfm&gid=232&gscid=53]