Josefa Fritz Barham

Bio

Josefa Fritz Barham was born in the Bavarian Alps. Growing up on the family farm, she finished her studies in organic farming and agricultural management, but soon fell into the exciting world of rock music and promotion. After extensive traveling and much soul searching, she attended the Peter Zeiler School of Art in Munich to study drawing and painting. She later immigrated to Canada and moved to the Sunshine Coast where she met the renowned artist Kathryn Jacobi. Under Jacobi’s guiding influence, Josefa found the tools for her contemporary paintings in the expressive medium of oil on canvas.

“In my eyes, realism becomes abstract if you look at it closely enough. In nature when the sun hits water or shines through trees, the real thing seems suddenly quite abstract. It is like looking at myriad of colours made out of rectangles, circles, rounds, triangles, dots and squares. I wanted to see the same thing happen in my painting by involving those shapes in my work. I try to create realism seen through a kaleidoscopic view, where the line between reality and abstraction changes with the blink of an eye.”