Story of Thomas Barkie
I’m Thomas Bark (1995) born in Amstelveen in The Netherlands. When I was young I already had a great interest in beautiful objects, paintings and their details. From a tender age, my parents took my sister and me to many photography, contemporary art and modern art museums in the Netherlands. After our visits, we started making our own ‘‘artworks’’ on pieces of old wallpaper, which then hung on the wall for a long time. In high school I had art as a subject and during these lessons I began to show my creativity more and more, and so my artistic development came to life.
Besides my passion for art, I always wanted to travel around the world. At the age of 17, I realised that I would rather travel than continue studying. I quit school and started working to earn money so that I could start traveling. Things moved quickly, I took a photography course, bought a decent camera and started photographing my travels.
My trips to Asia and New Zealand became the main inspiration for my photography style. The details of our wonderful nature, the various traditional cultures of our planet and the elusive universe became very characteristic in every picture I created.
Nothing was too crazy to get the best possible photograph; climbing a volcano, discovering hidden waterfalls with locals, getting out of bed at night for the most beautiful sunrise or going deep into the desert to capture the starriest sky you can imagine.
I have created my own unique style through my travels around the world, I have named it "Life on Earth" art. I make art about world wonders created on earth by humans and nature in the elusive universe. I want to document life on earth through my art.
In particular, my colourful imagination and my vision of following our dreams are the most important aspect of my art. I am always looking for new undiscovered places, wonders created by nature, clear skies to photograph the cosmos with unique compositions using the natural elements of life, combining these elements with my colourful imagination and thoughts about life. I work with different materials to make my own taken photographs come to life. The artworks are made to stand out, to inspire and to reflect on the dreams you & I have during our only life on earth. The money from each artwork I sell will be invested in new artworks & my project in Sumba, Pemimpi Sumba.