Sawtooth Gallery exhibition celebrates the cheaper things in life

"Sweet Escape," her first exhibition for Sawtooth Gallery, aims to celebrate the cheap comforts like confectionary that most of us can afford.

The exhibition features brightly coloured, realistic oil paintings of lollies, toys, and trinkets.

Barron has always found comfort in colourful, childlike imagery. "It feels really joyful to go back to those sorts of things," she said.

"Sweet Escape" was spurred on by feedback she received from an interested collector who said they'd be interested to see her do works that were fancier and more luxurious.

"Not the sort of fast food type paintings I normally do," she says.

She decided to go in the opposite direction. "This is the best some of us can afford, there's beauty in this," she said.

Barron is drawn to contrasts and, in this exhibition, she uses the elevated, expensive medium of oil painting to illustrate a somewhat lowbrow subject like confectionery.

She says she wants to disrupt the idea " that oil paintings are supposed to depict these beautiful, purer things"

Her approach is about "celebrating the opposite" and bringing a "a new perspective of what visual art means."

"Sweet Escape" will be on display from February 17 to March 19 at Sawtooth Gallery, Lindsay St, Invermay.