A Huntington Beach native based in Southern California, mixed media painter Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker creates imagery inspired by print media and the graphic sensibilities of 80’s SoCal punk and surf, the subcultural terrain shaping the 80’s in which he grew up. His works feel surreal and partial, intentionally stylized to the point of decontextualization. By framing figurative subjects with an element of voyeuristic ambiguity, Barker’s compositions have the intuitive spontaneity of a Polaroid and the deliberate staging of a stencil. Familiar and far, they feel strange in their proximity.