Happy Places presents a new body of work by Katrina Barter that extends her established visual language through increased scale and a focused engagement with moments of heightened appreciation.
The paintings are developed from photographs taken on her mobile phone, captured in moments of gratitude for being alive and for the experience itself. These source images are not treated as records, but as points of departure. Through Barter’s process of abstraction into large grid-based compositions, the works move away from depiction toward sensation.
Scale plays a central role in this body of work. The paintings are intended to be immersive, inviting a physical and perceptual encounter that echoes the intensity of the originating moments.
In Happy Places, Barter considers how such moments are held in memory: not as clear images but as enduring atmospheres. The works offer a space for viewers to enter into a space where recognition gives way to feeling, and where a sense of connection, awe, and presence can be activated.
About the Artist
Katrina Barter is a visual artist working in painting. Her practice explores the dynamic and metaphysical nature of memory and the elusiveness of consciousness, with a focus on how memories are felt and re-experienced in the present. She is particularly interested in how certain moments resonate disproportionately within our perceived structures of time and space.
She creates grid-based abstract paintings based on her personal memories captured through photography and drawing. Used as both a visual and conceptual framework, the grid reflects the fragmented and dynamic nature of memory and serves as a metaphor for consciousness as something infinite.
Informed by her background in textile practice, cloth plays an active role in shaping each work, with the interaction between paint and surface contributing to the physical and emotional presence of the paintings.
Barter’s work seeks to move from the personal toward a shared experience, inviting viewers to project their own memories and associations.
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