Robert Barker - Art & Photography

25/02/2026

Phwoar, check out this work in progress. Some lovely cracking in there.

(Ongoing ridiculous over the top prop making for Visions of Hades series which I may finish by 2050)

23/02/2026

Too tired to take life seriously, so sketching gnomes and bunnies.

21/02/2026

Some days I hate tech more than others. I'm working on assorted collages/montages at the moment, and the personalised ads appear to have picked up on this.

I've started to get ads for "easy collage packs" and assorted ways to optimise the process. I don't want to optimise the process; the process is the purpose.

I make stuff entirely from things I create myself, things I find and things I photograph. The inspiration and chaos in the images comes from that.

Can we, as a society, please stop optimising away humanity.

20/02/2026

I'm calling this done, not because I want to, but because my cats have taken over the bed and are slowly pushing me off it.

Ink, acrylic paint, photographs of chipped paint and photographs of birds/trees

20/02/2026

The biscuit aisle in our local M&S smells of groin. This is not ideal. Ideally, nothing should smell of groin, and that includes groins. Clean groin? Nope, grubby groin. A biscuit aisle with a faint, but distinct whiff of grubby groin. You may ask, "How do you know what grubby groin smells like?" because I used to be a teenage boy. Note that I have since learned how to use showers.

I've not noticed any other locations in the store smelling a little bodily. The wine aisle does not have a hint of earwax about it, the free-from aisle does not smell like an unwashed armpit, and the veg section doesn't smell of bum. Biscuits should not smell of groin, and neither should the area in which they are stored.

I considered informing a member of staff, but it's a difficult thing to bring up. "Urm, excuse me, are you aware that the place people buy their middle-class custard creams smells a bit like unwashed privates?" It's not a conversation that's ever going to go well for the initiator. "Sorry, sir, could you explain why you are sniffing our biscuits?" At best, I would feel too awkward to ever return; at worst, I would be put on some sort of list. Either way, no more Percy Pigs for me.

I did not buy any grubby crotch biscuits; I did, however, come home with cheese that smells like feet, but that's acceptable.

20/02/2026

Best advert for a service I've seen this week.

Writers' HQ are my heroes (for today anyway).

Apparently the “clumsy, archaic or formulaic ‘wooden’ phrases which a 21st century educated person would never use” is a give away.

In case we haven’t made it abundantly clear over the last couple of years, Writers’ HQ is at the forefront of the Butlarian Jihad. That is, we are on a crusade against thinking machines. That is, we are absolutely not here for using generative AI to write, to create art, to do any of those most human of things.

Read our blog for a full response, and what - if anything - all this bu****it can teach us about writing https://writershq.co.uk/no-were-not-using-ai-thanks/

19/02/2026

Ink Landscape. It's too damn wet out there, but I miss being out in the winter landscape.

Made with scans of treated paper, ink marks and photographs I have taken.

19/02/2026

My therapist told me I had to start turning up as my authentic self, so I told my clients they were t***s and went to eat chips in the woods. Not sure how I’m going to pay the mortgage now.

15/02/2026

We grow brambles in our garden. By "grow", I of course mean "ignore, and let them do their own thing". Of course, this means that our garden is mostly bramble. I'd like to claim our house resembles a cottage from a fairytale in the midst of a bramble forest, but the solar panels and knackered Honda Civic detract somewhat. As does the industrial estate next door.

We grow them for three reasons, in no specific order: they are great for wildlife, we like the fruit, and it's easier to let them grow than try to do something about them. The birds are grateful to us. I shall take the screeching of a hundred starlings each time I trudge out to the shops as a sign of gratitude, as well as the smattering of white droppings they leave across the aforementioned (black) Honda Civic.

Each year, I am sent out to carry out the harvest. Often, while I'm stuck on a call with a client or a particularly chatty family member, I can pace up and down our garden for an hour each evening, collecting litres of blackberries. There will always be more the next day.

I follow a strict protocol that I invented in my head: One for us, leave two for the birds; if I drop one, it becomes property of the mice, and the hedgerow must have its blood.

A few years back, I took an adult friend blackberry picking. He had somehow achieved adulthood without ever engaging with the hedgerow, an abomination of a life. He seemed ok with this. He dedicated most of his focus and energy to avoiding being pricked or stung by the inevitable nettles. This is foolish. The hedgerow will only give up its best fruit in exchange for a little blood. Just the occasional scratch is enough. You need to really clamber in, up to your elbows, or even armpits; otherwise, it's just not worth the effort.

The harvest must be a ritual, a collaboration with nature, an exchange. If the rules and protocols are not followed, all your crumbles will be bitter and taste of regret.

14/02/2026

Happy Spooky Valentines, fellow weirdos.

I started this for Spookytober, got distracted, forgot about i,t then finished it last week 😂

❤️❤️❤️

11/02/2026

New stuff! As part of my campaign to dedicate an almost insane amount of effort into minor background details in a photo.

I originally considered carving these myself, but decided that was probably pushing it a bit far. Thank you foreverchicmouldings on Etsy.