Barry McCullough was the founder and managing director of Hydro Studios, the leading design studio in Ireland during the 1980′s and 1990′s. Barry built the firm from just himself to over eight full-time designers plus support staff. Because of the success of his unique concept of offering more than design services, award-winning Hydro Studios offered a complete service, from initial design to final product. To do so, Hydro Studios services included a commercial photography, illustration, copywriting, graphic design, and audio/video production, followed by web development in the mid nineties. Hydro Studios long client list included local, national, and international firms.
In 2000, Barry decided to close down Hydro Studios after devoting his time to writing his book, STOP!, which was published in 1999. The initial printing of STOP! sold out within months. Barry began his consulting business when readers began contacting him requesting his services to coach them on how to use Expert System of Patterns to enable them to engineer their business processes so that they could do more of what they want, however and whenever they want, based on their own unique set of outcomes or goals.
Eight years ago Barry returned full circle to his passion of creating art. This time instead of choosing commercial art as a business model he’s chosen the satisfying path of fine art created in his studio at home.
This is an extract of what he has to say about his artwork:
I love color, form and light, my work celebrates this. Colors washed by wind, rain, mists and soft sun, my interior world is more tropical, inspired by extended trips living in the Amazon. Creatures, people, places and things encountered in visions and in treks. On the borderlands – exhaustion, all night ceremonies and exotic wildness, all experienced in a state of total freedom.
My paintings and drawings are memories of things seen, not the objects themselves. Whether or not they are ‘real’ matters little as, in front of the canvas, it’s all memories from life, my life.
There is a joy in my art I find difficult to express in any other way. It touches depths only my marriage surpasses.
As a full-time professional artist, Barry spent many years painting in West Cork, Ireland and was a core member of Working Artists Studio in Skibbereen. He now happily resides on the sunny island of Maui, Hawaii where he finds the vibrancy of color beyond real.
Barry’s paintings can be found in private collections as well as in several commercial venues.