Josephine Barreiro (aka J131 for her street art) earned her MFA in Fine Arts and MA in Art Education at New Jersey City University and holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Her body of work is laced with emotion, spontaneous energy, distinctive use of line, saturated colors, and her Spanish heritage. Ms. Barreiro was featured in The Newark Artists Photo Documentary Project in 2018. Her works were exhibited at Pen and Brush Gallery, NYC, where she created a live painting during the exhibition. Ms. Barreiro was also featured in an NYC-ARTS segment on PBS in 2016. She is also an active member of the Neo-Latino Art Collective.
Josephine Barreiro has exhibited at the Fountain Street Fine Arts Gallery, Framingham, MA; Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland, CA; Pen + Brush Gallery, Wilmer Jennings Gallery, One Art Space, New York, NY; Hall of Fame Gallery- BCC, Bronx, NY; Human Rights Institute Gallery, James Howe Gallery, Union, NJ; Paul Robeson Gallery, City Without Walls, Gallery Aferro, L.I.P.S, Index Art, Newark, NJ; Distillery Art Gallery, L.I.T.M, Harold B.- Lemmerman Gallery, Jersey City, NJ; Valley Arts Gallery, Orange, NJ, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft NJ; The Arts Guild, Rahway, NJ and UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, CO; among other locations.
Statement:
Art has taken me on a journey through my cultural memories and life experiences fueled by emotion and a passion for my craft. My color canvases show the influence of my Spanish heritage as well as 20th-century Spanish painters. My black and white works portray our socio-political situations expressed through gestural figures or animals who share their predicament with us. Animals serve as metaphors to exemplify pain, love, sorrow, joy, anxiety, and anger. My goal is to present images illustrating the human condition and its complexity. My focus and intuitive response to the world around me allow me to reflect on my ideas to complete each piece. Whether I’m working with color or creating black and white collage pieces, I look forward to the visceral experience of building mixed media layers to illustrate real and imagined situations. The act of painting is an avenue delivering my ideas from my center to a tangible surface.