Artist Spotlight: Eira-Shay Barker-Hart
For Love, Re-Written, presented by Auction for Change, Eira-Shay Barker-Hart offers a body of work that feels both deeply atmospheric and emotionally intimate. Her paintings invite viewers into a world where light and shadow coexist, where natural materials carry memory, and where love is understood not as something simple or pure, but as something shaped through tenderness, pain, and healing. At the heart of her practice is a belief that painting can be a quiet form of activism, one that reconnects us to ourselves, to each other, and to the natural world.
When asked how light functions symbolically within her paintings, Barker-Hart describes it as a metaphor for balance. “Light represents the constant interplay between illumination and shadow, visually and emotionally,” she explains. In her work, light does not exist without darkness. “Light stands out sharply against darkness; the two define each other.” This contrast mirrors her understanding of love itself. “Love becomes more meaningful when paired with pain,” she reflects, allowing emotional complexity to sit at the centre of her visual language.
Her choice of surface plays a crucial role in shaping this narrative. Painting on raw timber using oil and natural materials, she is drawn to what the material already holds. “I’m drawn to timber for the life it brings into the work,” she says. “It has a golden iridescence, as if lit from within.” The grain of the wood fascinates her because it carries history and movement, shaped by “the ebb and flow of water and the cycles of life.”
Working with natural materials introduces an element of unpredictability. Uneven textures, subtle colour variations, and organic imperfections become collaborators rather than obstacles. Influenced by Pre-Raphaelite painters and their use of light and narrative, she enjoys juxtaposing this classical sensibility against a raw, living surface. Painting in this way, she explains, reflects her own history while also paying homage to nature, allowing the material itself to participate in the storytelling.
Themes of mysticism, love, and femininity are deeply rooted in her lived experience. Growing up on a remote island off the west coast of Canada, her childhood was “raw, rugged, and romantic, reminiscent of a dark fairytale.” Raised by a poet mother and a survivalist father, she was immersed in environmental and feminist literature, poetry, and creative self-expression from an early age. This upbringing continues to shape her practice today.
“Through my work, I wish to inspire others to be comfortable in their wildness, embrace sensitivity, and feel connected to nature”.
Now creating on Yugambeh land, place carries both inspiration and responsibility. Barker-Hart speaks with respect about Indigenous stewardship and reciprocity, acknowledging the privilege of creating in these sacred spaces. “There’s a magical feeling here that channels into my work,” she says, describing her paintings as expressions of gratitude rather than extraction.
Over the past year, water has become a central motif in her work, mapping her own journey of healing.
“I use it as a symbol of femininity, renewal, and love, I believe in creating work that honours the land rather than extracts from it,”
she says. For Barker-Hart, painting is “a quiet form of activism,” a way to rekindle connection and invite a more caring relationship with the natural world.
Environmentalism and feminism are inseparable within her practice. These values shape not only what she paints, but how and why she paints. She observes that our disconnection from the environment stems from overconsumption driven by capitalism. The timber she uses is intentionally humble, while her subject matter documents both fleeting natural places and our emotional relationship with them.
Feminism shapes the emotional core of her work. She describes her practice as a form of “soft activism,” one that encourages tenderness, intuition, and emotional complexity. Femininity, as she explores it, is embodied, resilient, and deeply tied to nature. Painting becomes an act of care and healing. “I paint as an act of healing,” she says, “sending positivity into the world because inspired introspection can lead people to action.”
When asked what she hopes guests will feel when encountering her work at Love, Re-Written, Barker-Hart’s answer is simple and generous. “I would like the guests to feel a sense of belonging,” she says. Belonging to themselves, to each other, and to the world around them. “Within that interconnectedness,” she adds, “I hope they feel inspired to love a little harder.”
Her paintings do not demand attention. They invite it. Through light and shadow, raw timber and water, mysticism and care, Eira-Shay Barker-Hart offers a quiet reimagining of love, one rooted in connection, healing, and reverence for the natural world.
