Here is an interview of me by musician Martin Gordon, from 2015, where I happily got to chat about my art and music and other things:
Lori Hartbarger On Art and Music
Lori Hartbarger
How did you begin painting?
“Picture making started at a very early age, it has been something I’ve always done. This progressed over time, and various artistic courses in college followed, including: Drawing, painting, design, art history, pottery (quickly seeing that the pottery wheel and I were never going to get on), and photography. There was no question that watercolour was my natural medium. As, unfortunately, there was not any proper painting instruction there, I did as I’ve always done, and researched what I liked, finding my inspirations and figuring things out on my own as best as I could, which is something I continue to do, pursuing interests and dabbling into this and that. After doing this for so long, I now have possibly too many interests, though because of that it’s never boring inside my head and there are never-ending lists of ideas for proposed projects, which often weigh on me for wondering when I’ll get to them (not to mention all the unread books that need to be read). Even for projects that no one else may even see, they still personally matter, as I place much importance on personal satisfaction of creative endeavours, and care not what the trend-crazed world may think.”
Poppy Meadow
What’s the connection between painting and music for you? Do you listen while you paint?
“Music and painting are important and harmoniously linked in my life, though music usually takes precedence over painting, it is more exciting for a start! For me, a significant aspect of creativity, such as in art/music, is that it can be timeless and enable you to create your own atmosphere or environment. Depending on the approach, it can provide a place of beauty and escapism from the world outside (which can be very disturbing and violent, where ugliness often reigns over beauty) bringing joy and peacefulness which is liberating, though that may sound rather fanciful to any non-romantic, non-dreamers.
I began seriously working at my singing in my early teens and, at sixteen, started guitar lessons after being given a lovely vintage Epiphone acoustic guitar, which is still my most treasured instrument. After a year or two I stopped the lessons as I got bored with them (how undisciplined of me) and preferred trying to create my own music (there is a pattern emerging here!) A few years later I started making home recordings of bits of music (never will I forget the thrill of using a multi-track recorder for the first time), tinkering with a keyboard, and seriously setting about songwriting and teaching myself to play flute after getting heavily into Jethro Tull. Some other instruments followed.”
Heavy Horses
“Despite devotedly working hard and being compelled to do all this, it took some time, due to a degree of shyness, before I would even let anyone hear any of it, and the thought hadn’t entered my head to actually make a CD until later, after doing some long-distance collaborating and then later putting up some music online which had a very good response which emboldened me to create a sort of cottage industry for all this, called Thistle Cottage Recordings (I was in a Scottish folk phase at the time, hence the name which lives on, though the style doesn’t) and have made three handmade concept albums so far.
I do listen to music when painting, and sometimes listen to online radio programmes such as BBC Radio 4 extra, other times I just like it quiet, it depends on my mood.”
“My artwork, which is primarily watercolour painting, is often inspired by British landscapes and nature, and so there have appeared an assortment of creatures in my paintings over time: horses, hares, sheep, badgers, a mouse or two...”
A Gathering of Animals
Young Leaping Hare
Barn Owl In Moonlight
“And owls, birds, not to mention lots of hills, trees, flowers and storybook-type illustrations (and sometimes people).”
Toadstool Path
Tree and Castle
“Except for creating little paintings for my own CD album booklets, making pictures inspired by music hasn’t figured largely in my painting subjects. It’s a fascinating and boundless concept, which brings us to two of this year’s pictures and GG&S.”
Are you a Gilbert & Sullivan lover? When did you discover them? What do you like in their stuff?
“A G&S lover? It could be that I’m still in a kind of charmed neophyte stage, or just past that. I owe this burgeoning interest in Gilbert and Sullivan to you, as I had lived my entire life so far free of any acquaintance with those esteemed gentlemen (though I had heard of them); had strangely not encountered this enthralling body of work until late in 2014, after you mentioned your forthcoming project and your admiration for their productions and how brilliant they were. This sufficiently piqued my curiosity enough to investigate this, and as we seemed to have similar tastes in many things (and liking their songs that you’d previously recorded) I didn’t feel that I would go too wrong with G&S. So I daringly procured ‘The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan‘ book, which was leisurely read from front to back, all 800+ pages!
I suffered no ill effects from this, quite the contrary! This was all discovered and immediately revealed to be highly amusing, clever, fun and entertaining stuff. What had I been missing? How lacking my existence had been without such jaunty, merry and mellifluous melodies and whimsically witty wonders with words!
So I mainly became familiar with W.S. Gilbert’s writing first, and still have a way to go in delving into the lovely musical compositions of Arthur Sullivan. My exploration into the music has been carried out in an erratic manner, dipping into it here and there. Some of the songs that stand out and appeal (without having heard them all yet) include:
- The Captain of the Pinafore
- Modern Major General
- We Sail The Oceans Blue,
- Never Mind The Why And Wherefore
- For He Is An Englishman
- As Some Day It May Happen (I’ve Got A Little List)
- When I Was A Lad
- My Eyes Are Fully Opened…
Gilbert & Sullivan, with a bit of Gordon
“Of course, GG&S is a modern adaptation and not a period piece, but this picture was intended as a traditional sort of tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan for you. I enjoyed doing this picture very much, it turned out to be one of my very favourite paintings, which now belongs to you.
When this feature was suggested, I thought it would be a good idea to further extend this, as it was only logical to try illustrating at least one of your Mammal songs for the first time.
The following dark-sepia pen drawing illustrates the song ‘Stanley Green’ from the album ‘Include Me Out’. It’s an exquisite song, a little masterpiece with beautiful strings and much imagery. This drawing shows various elements mentioned in the song: The eccentric Stanley Green and his curious notice board, a clock, bicycle, and Oxford Circus London Underground sign.
(Martin's Stanley Green promo video)
My inclination now is to continue further with painting more theatrical and musical inspired pictures, as doing these pictures got me out of a painting rut, barely doing any art for awhile until these ideas surfaced.”
How did your love of Victoriana come about?
“From an early love of the literature (beginning with Sherlock Holmes), as many of my favourite authors were Victorian, with their highly picturesque and detailed descriptive writings; from novels, poetry, mysteries, fairy tales, ghost stories, folk tales and so on.
The endlessly impressive array of wonderful art and design including: Art Nouveau, The Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement, the Medieval Gothic Revival, the Celtic Revival, the fantastical book illustrators, many more things…a bewildering array of beguiling treasures. The Victorian era was a fascinating and impressive time of great richness and variety. It was surprisingly modern in some ways, perhaps marking the beginning of modern times. There are endless delights to be found, though, of course, as with anything, not everything was great. Child labour and slave conditions in factories, the workhouse, people who didn’t bathe, bone corsets and covers for piano legs would be a few of many unpleasant/odd aspects of that time, but my focus is on selecting the good. One of my planned musical projects is to set some Victorian verses and poems to music, something I’ve done before.
Victoriana is only part of many other things/times I like (an interest in the Middle Ages, the Edwardian era, the 1920s, 1960s, 1970s-especially love the 70s). Imaginative romantics are often drawn to other times and places. Being an amateur historian, I think picking what you like or that intrigues you from other times makes life much more interesting, and brings a more balanced outlook (sometimes viewing the sad state of things in the world with some detachment), not being a victim of dreaded contemporary culture, or lack of, to be accurate, which I have an aversion to much of, to put it mildly.
And that’s quite enough from me for now.”
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