Moving Hands – Barry Ball

A Retrospective of Pottery and Paintings.

Barry Ball was born in Feilding, New Zealand, he was then schooled in South Africa and further trained as a potter at Bergit Potteries in the United Kingdom.

After decades abroad, he returned to NZ, and quickly rose to respected status in the ceramic spheres. His pots were twice merited at the prestigious Fletcher Challenge Awards, a great accolade to have work accepted into this prestigious competition.

After 28 years, Ball transitioned his powerful sense of colour layering using various techniques and spontaneous abstraction to the world of fine art painting. His artworks are intuitive and sensitive. They are preplanned only in the broadest sense. Sometimes they arrive effortlessly, and other times it’s a struggle to finally reach completion.

His influence and shared philosophy are similar to Vasily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), who believed that “art should not be merely representational but should strive to express spirituality and the depth of human emotion through abstraction.”

This exhibition is a retrospective encounter and celebration of the decades of a persistent and relentless pursuit of a life of creativity by a dedicated and true artist.