Featured Artist Mitch Barrett

Through sculpture and painting, artist Mitch Barrett seeks to balance perfection and imperfection and explore the hidden self. Enjoy more of his work by visiting his website.

 

 

My artwork reflects my life, a work in progress…

I seek to explore and express aspects of our hidden inner selves through my artwork. This paradox is parallel to the transforming and continuously uncertain essence of life itself. It is a journey that started from a chaotic beginning. Through self-exploration, I discover inner conflicts rooted in duality.

 

 

In my paintings “Dorian Gray” and “Together in Brokenness,” I show this duality, and also how simultaneously these differences form a unity. This duality and unity are also represented in my sculptural work “Equus Unity”.

 

 

I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan, which has a culture that definitely influenced my work. The Japanese belief in wabi- sabi embraces the imperfect in that imperfections are seen as beautiful occurrences. I realised that striving for perfection in my art stunted a creative raw energy. I had to find a way to appreciate the beauty in something that was not perfect.

 

 

During this journey, outside experiences trigger thoughts and expressions of emotion. Hidden inner memories emerge. Inspiration comes within a few seconds, and a quick sketch is done before the image escapes.

 

 

The image then becomes a work in progress. My paintings and sculptures sometimes take months to take form and shape. Sometimes I experience a struggle while the artwork is evolving, as I need it to convey meaning. I want to create a story to tell the viewer; one that is felt but cannot be verbalised.

 

 

Throughout my career my artistic work has been multifaceted. This has allowed me to experiment with different types of media and to develop different styles to express my artistic journey.

 

 

My journey is not fixed and cannot be confined to just one style of art. Tt is a fluid energy that seeks to find what works best to express the story behind the image. Man is a living creature; we are all creative individuals, and it is up to us to find our own way.

 

 

A series of sculptures of Equus represent the completeness of the unity of man and animal. It has a theme of contrasting generic opposites with their differences that complement into a harmonic unity. “Equus Oedipus” shows the primal connection between a mother and a young boy. Together they form a completeness of horse and human.

 

 

“Fragmented” shows the figures of a man and a woman entwined, balanced and embraced in a kiss. They take pieces from each other and discard them, taking each other apart until there is nothingness. In an interesting variation of this sculpture, they pick up fragments of themselves and add them to the missing parts of each other. This is a reference to the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi where beauty can be found from the damaged and repaired self.

 

Artist Mitch Barrett invites you to follow him on Instagram.

 

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