Launceston painter Katie Barron finds the joyful treats of her new home

Painting has a few precedents: in the popular consciousness we associate the medium with fusty Renaissance men in ruffs and robes, like Da Vinci or Caravaggio, daubing away at pristine faces. In modern terms, we think Van Gogh, the tortured artist whose only reprieve from emotion was the countryside, which he depicted with startling colour and motion.

What we certainly don't think of, though, are confectionary items. We don't see a painter working in three strange yet evident layers - like that of a smashed cake - who cooks or produces her "junk-food" subject, takes its picture and then paints it.

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But like Andy Worhol before her, Barron - a Canadian emigre artist now living in Launceston - is dissecting our taste for popular things, only this time it's not celebrity fascination, it's our sweet tooth.

In her Mowbray home and studio, the artist - who has become one of Launceston's most exciting emerging painters - has filled her walls with "deliciously realistic" renderings of treats like ice cream and lollies on black backgrounds. But her paintings are not simply straight translations of food stuff onto canvas. They're sometimes surreal mish-mashes. The photo-realistic jelly might be filled with paperclips, or the ice cream cones topped with a baseball rather than a scoop.

"I'll walk around a shop or something with just nothing in my mind," Barron said.

"Then an idea will pop into my head, a subconscious thing. You're influenced by everything that you're around and, if you let it, it comes out in strange ways."

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Effectively self taught, the young painter - whose work now features in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery's RISE exhibition, and previously at Sawtooth ARI - has "always been an artsy-type". Briefly studying photography at University in Canada, she came to painting suddenly when travelling to Australia for the first time around 2017.

It was quickly a place where Barron wanted to move, and it was only natural for her to come back. She and her partner chose Tasmania, though they'd never been, but there was the obvious romantic appeal to a place that was so rugged and homely. But unlike other artists in the state who are inspired by its sublime landscapes, Barron's great muse is processed food.

"Those things had a huge influence on me and I don't want to deny that because people don't think it's good enough for art," she said.

"I didn't spend time in the mountains growing up, I ate lots of mac and cheese and played with colourful, cheap toys. That was my reality and my cultural currency."

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Arriving from Alberta just over a year ago to Launceston, her goal has been "figuring out what it means to be a professional artist" and not "just somebody that paints portraits of their friends". And she's found an extremely welcoming environment for the arts, one which has pushed her career further than she ever dreamt.

"[Being in QVMAG's gallery] is the biggest step I've had in my career in terms of a recognised institution," she said.

"I feel incredibly lucky and I think it's been a big turning point for me, because in art things can look a bit slow sometimes. But so far, all positive, incredible opportunities have started to bubble up and stem from this one, which makes me feel like I owe QVMAG the world."

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The new local, who is embracing her Tasmanian home and its own confectionery appetites, is looking forward to a future of what she calls "joyful painting".

"There's a lot of serious work out there that's really important, but I'm a goofy painter who wants to go in the opposite direction, I think," she said.

"I want to pepper in a little bit of radical joy."

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