Katharina Barrett

Katharina Barrett
Eureka, California, USA

STATEMENT

I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember. Raised by makers—a fine and graphic artist for a mother, a designer for a father—I grew up surrounded by artistic process. Shaped by the brutal Arizona heat, I hid inside galleries and libraries, collecting color and language instead of toys. The desert’s harsh light and deep shadow, its cycles of exposure and concealment, formed the backbone of my visual thinking.

I was also raised Catholic, immersed in ritual, symbolism, and rules. That upbringing left a visual residue that still moves through my work: halos, gold, devotional framing, the body as both sacred and suspect. What interests me now is not belief, but aftermath—what remains once the core tenets of faith are rejected. What beauty survives in the rubble.

My work grows from these contradictions: reverence and refusal, discipline and rebellion, tenderness and threat. Over time, this sharpened into a language of neon color layered over grit, reclaimed textures tangled with found poetry, and vintage imagery charged with feral emotion.

Collage became my medium because it mirrors how life actually feels—fragmented, contradictory, and capable of transformation. Mixed media allows beauty to bruise and misbehave. Gold behaves like a scar. Color becomes a nervous system. Text acts as spell, accusation, or confession.

I call this aesthetic Baroque Grunge—part relic, part riot. My work asks what happens when the sacred is dismantled but not discarded, and reverence is reclaimed on one’s own terms.

BIO

Katharina Barrett is a mixed-media collage artist working under the name Baroque Grunge. She was raised in Arizona and has been based in Eureka, California, for nearly 27 years. The contrast between the desert environment of her upbringing and the coastal landscape she now inhabits continues to inform her visual sensibilities.

Barrett is largely self-taught, with early artistic training shaped by growing up in a creative household. Her mother, a practicing artist, played a central role in developing her understanding of color, composition, and visual balance, while her father’s background in design reinforced an attention to structure and form. Though she did not pursue formal art education, this early immersion in creative process established a lasting foundation for her practice.

Working primarily in mixed-media collage, Barrett combines paint, vintage imagery, found text, and reclaimed materials to create figurative works that emphasize surface complexity, visible process, and bold color relationships. Language is a consistent component of her practice; text fragments are assembled into found poems that function as integral visual and conceptual elements rather than captions or explanations.

Her work frequently explores themes of power, desire, inheritance, and the lasting influence of belief systems. Barrett has exhibited and sold work through local galleries, independent shops, and community art spaces. Her practice continues to evolve through small-scale original works and collectible pieces, grounded in material exploration and a sustained commitment to visual density and emotional resonance.

ARTIST CONTACT

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www.katilady.etsy.com
INSTAGRAM

IMAGES