Selected original paintings
Viriditas
2021. Water-based oils on canvas, 50.8 x 60.9cm
This is a horse chestnut tree on the edge of Wimbledon Common, which I pass most days on my dog walk. I was moved to start painting it in 2019 after receiving some news which caused me to question my religious beliefs, and which shook the very foundations of my identity. I had a primal urge to paint and a visceral need to paint in green.
Over the following months, the tree slowly grew, and - as I wept and journaled and read voraciously - so did I. In 2021, I attended a series of online seminars on the medieval mystic Hildegaard of Bingen, and recognised in my tree-painting a deep yearning for the healing power of‘viriditas’, Hildegaard’s term for a divine, greening, creative life force. Viriditas brings fullness of life and rich fruit; without it there is‘ariditas’, a shrivelled state in which there is emptiness, suffering, destruction and injustice. Viriditas for all!
Butter Yellow Tulips with Ikat Lamp
2022. Water-based oils on canvas, 60 x 60cm
My mother-in-law bought us a beautiful bouquet of flowers for Easter. After some days, they started to fade, as flowers do. But not the tulips. They outperformed the other blooms, with the stamina and grace of State ballet dancers, all sublime, arched lines and strong limbs. A tour de force, on our hallway table, next to the lamp with the Melodi Horne ikat shade. I smiled every time I walked in through the front door.
'There is an emotional depth in Barrett’s painting – pockets of unexpected colour, abrasive forms that are initially masked by the reflexively familiar subject matter'.
Ellen Vrana, from an essay on ‘A Room of One’s Own’, on the website The Examined Life.
Read full essay here.
Hyacinth Bulb (after Cossington Smith)
2020. Water-based oils on wooden board, 15 x 15cm
I first came across Grace Cossington Smith’s ‘The Sock Knitter’ on a visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I had made a beeline to the 20th century artists and spent a happy few hours among the paintings of Lloyd Rees, Arthur Murch, William Dobell, Margaret Preston and others. But it was ‘The sock knitter’ I fell in love with: the gentle domestic scene; the repeating wallpaper pattern; the clever colours. She came home with me on a postcard and has been sitting on a shelf in one room or another ever since. One day I looked at a hyacinth bulb and I saw those very same colours. I put them in a small painting – a tiny homage to a great painter.
Dahlias From the Allotment
2021. Water-based oils on board, 35 x 35cm
Walking past the local florist’s one day, I noticed a jug of flowers by the till with a hand-written sign propped up against them: “Dahlias from a local allotment”. These stunning flowers, with their enormous heads and café au lait petals, hadn’t been transported hundreds of miles. They hadn’t required aviation fuel, temperature-controlled trucks or plastic packaging. But their erratic supply and relatively short shelf-life means they are a less viable option for retailers than commercially grown blooms. I loved that someone was having a go, and snapped them up. They kept me company in the studio for a while, in my little vintage GPO jug.
Ranunculus with Textiles
2021. Water-based oils on board, 21 x 14.8cm
I have been buying textiles for over twenty years. One day, I think, I will do something with all these beautiful pieces – frame them, or make a cushion, or get a chair upholstered – but I never do. They end up draped over furniture, or hidden away in a cupboard. Painting them is a way to let them shine. On the chair is a beautiful indigo cloth from Mali; on the table are fabric samples. On the wall is a treasured portrait of me by my daughter, painted when she was little. I left out the details of the original, which include eye bags and the odd facial hair.
‘I am seduced by colour and love working in oils, thick and saturated and malleable. The paint as alive as the subject. It allows itself to be pulled and pushed and has a spirit of its own – we are co creators engaged in a dance.’
Mel Barrett
Roses in the Water Jug
2021. Water-based oils on board, 21 x 14.8 cm
This glass jug caught my eye in an antique shop a few years ago, when I was Christmas shopping with my sister. She went back for it later and surprised me with it on Christmas Day. In the winter it holds water or ginger ale and sits on a tray alongside thistle-adorned glasses, from which we sip warming tots of whisky in front of the fire. In the summer it gets filled with roses from the garden.
French Carousel
2021. Water-based oils on wooden board, 25.4 x 30.48cm
Fairgrounds, like circuses, are highly symbolic. For me they are nostalgic places, where imagination is allowed to take precedence over reason and logic. This was my daughter when she was nine, enraptured by a ride on a carousel in Lyon.
Uluru
2021. Water-based oils on canvas, 20.32 x 25.4 cm
“What’s all the fuss about?”, said my husband, before we got there, when it was still dark and there was still a chill in the early morning air. “It’s just a rock.” But it isn’t just a rock. It’s a place where humans converge and have done for millennia, resting in the shadow of something much mightier than they...
At The Artist's Table
2022. Gouache and pastel on watercolour paper, 26 x 28cm
I find the workspaces of artists fascinating. They are tableaux of beautiful and useful objects, such as the tools of their trade, stuffed into various receptacles from biscuit tins to vintage pots; reference materials, like postcards and photos; and occasionally the vestiges of still lifes, for example, wilted flowers. Sometimes I work at my kitchen table – this is my trusty tray that gets moved aside when it’s time to clear away the mess.