Exotic & Hypnotic

Barnaby Ward’s Beautiful Creatures

Barnaby Ward is a fascinating UK-Barbados transplant artist who relishes in the challenge of drawing true beauty. At 3 years old, he moved to Barbados where he lived until college. After a few years of Toronto, he moved back to Barbados where he lives and works today.  His training is in graphic design, but his artistic influences lie in the work of artists like Egon Schiele, Rene Gruau and the beauty-salon-adorning works of Patrick Nagel (you’ll know it when you Google it).

His work might seem daunting, but he’s a bit like what a graphic novelist or an illustration artist is expected to be like. He’s been to Comic-Con, he likes rum and “macaroni pie.” Who knows what he dressed up as at Comic-Con. . . Probably not as Slave-Princess Leia like you, sicko, but maybe as Mark Hamil as Cock Knocker from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. You should have gone as Space Ghost.

He just showed work in the “2nd Annual Supersonic Electronic Invitational” at Spoke Art in San Francisco, and his work is beginning to gain national and international recognition. Even from Barbados, which is not exactly a Mecca of commerce, Ward manages to sell works across the globe. Granted, with the internet, that’s not as difficult as it was in nineteen ninety-something; his work is good.

One might deign to deem it difficult to dislike Barnaby Ward’s drawings. Luscious and subtly dark; Ward’s women embrace their monster counterparts with one part naïveté and one part wickedness. Their strange beast-pets call up ideas of Japanese monster-porn somewhere in the dark corners of your brain that you don’t visit often (can’t believe you dressed up as Leia). But lately, Ward’s work has been making its way back into the mainstream world of art galleries and art fairs, revealing new inspirations in his artistic repertoire, and propelling him to start a new series of work. CULTURE caught up with him and got to discuss Barbados, his loving inspirations, rum and his gorgeous new body of work.

When pressed about the women featured in his work, Ward says he draws from his past. “You can probably tell already that my characters are all very similar. The variances are pretty minor—compiled from lots of different life experiences.”

He pulls the women in his work from the past loves of his life. “The profile that I always draw is my wife’s profile. Other aspects date back to first crushes . . . Kind of a whole psychological mind-f@*k really, if you want to get into it. I’m sure a therapist would have a field day analyzing it.”

True to ironic form, Ward feels inspired by literary fiction and childlike whimsy, even as an adult. “I never really liked Alice in Wonderland. It was like a challenge to make it in a way that I liked it. So it’s kind of perverted and dark and kinky. I just like the contrast of something pretty with something grotesque . . . It was like this harmony between something really grotesque and something really pretty and that worked.” Ward shows at times, two distinct and similar sides to the subject. That one may look so young and full of questions and old and full of knowledge at the same time is not only powerful but also idyllic. “I like to create that fantasy world where everything works,” he says.

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Break Out

The Tropical Winds of Change? [art: 93059743, 76776751, 75656347]

Artist Barnaby Ward doesn’t understand why cannabis isn’t legal yet—at least in his country of residence. “I have never in my life heard from anyone, even a slightly convincing argument about why marijuana should be illegal. I don’t think anyone else has either,” says Ward. Like all of the Caribbean islands cannabis is illegal, though teeters on socially acceptable by residents and police. They mainly target growers, and not users. Barbados Attorney General Adriel Brathwiate said last month that he had doubts his country was winning the war on drugs and said the country should re-examine its existing cannabis laws. According to the Stabroek News, Brathwaite made his remarks while speaking at the opening of a national drug council meeting that was reviewing the country’s drug policies. He pointed to what he sees as an increase in the country’s cannabis use—particularly by young people—as evidence that its policies are failing. “If you go to football games across Barbados, it is almost the norm. There was a time when the boys used to hide, but now boys and girls [are] openly smoking,” he said. “I am not sure how I feel about it.” Brathwaite wasn’t alone in his assessment. Stabroek News also reports on an “unnamed High Court judge” who recommended legalizing personal use and possession of drugs like cannabis.