Artist Profile: Hunter Barker (1918–2010)


Hunter Barker is one of those artists who I wish I could tell you more about but I couldn’t find much information about him online.  Here’s what it said over at AskArt.com:

“Born in Canada in 1918, Hunter Barker studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Darlington Art College, Durham, England and the London School of Arts and Crafts, London.  Mr. Barker studied and worked with many famous artists throughout his career including Robert Loughheed, Charles Seliger, John Clymer, A. Shore Packer, and Charles Kingham.  He spent many years illustrating for national magazines, paperback book publishers and NBC Television in New York.”

I was also able to find a small memorial site for him, that indicated that Barker died in Florida in the year 2010.

Sometimes, after I do one of these artist profiles, a family member or a former colleague will leave a comment and let us know more about the artist.  Maybe that will happen in this case.

Below is a sampling of Barker’s work.  He was active in the 1950s.  While working on this post, I came across many covers that looked like they could have been done by Barker but I have only included work that has definitely been credited as being his:

You’ve Watched The Trailer. Now check out this new Last Jedi poster from Lucasfilm!


Along with a trailer, Lucasfilm released a new poster for The Last Jedi earlier today.  It’s half Luke and half Kylo Ren with Rey firmly in the middle, assuming the stance of a warrior.

Should we read into anything about how her light saber starts out as blue before turning red towards the top?  Some say that red is the color of the dark side so what should we make of the entire poster being tinted crimson?  Has Luke gone over to the dark side or are we just reading too much into a poster?

 

Artist Profile: Robert C. Sherry (1920 — 1987)


I certainly do wish that I could tell you more about Robert C. Sherry, other than the dates of his birth and death and that he was born in New York City.  According to the biography at Askart, he flew for the Navy’s Material Air Transport Service during World War II and, after the war, he worked for King’s Features and ghosted for several comic strip artists.  He became the art director for Link Aviation in 1962 and worked there for 20 years.

The entertaining sci-fi covers below, all of which are credited to Sherry, are all from the early 1940s.