New York artist Kevin Barrett has been surrounded by abstract sculpture and painting his entire life. His welded aluminum sculptures and wall reliefs reflect a successful blending of these two disciplines.

Born into a family of artists in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1962, Kevin learned about materials, structure, figurative forms, and eventually the elegance of abstract forms from his father, sculptor Bill Barrett. When the family moved to New York, Kevin apprenticed with his father and learned to weld and work with aluminum, steel, and bronze.

Kevin took an early interest in art and used to watch his grandfather, an abstract expressionist painter who founded the art department at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, paint in his studio. Barrett attributes his interest in and use of color to enhance the three-dimensional forms in his own work to this early influence.

In high school, Kevin won New York's Golden Key Award in Art. He also won a national scholastic art competition, which resulted in his first commission to build a large, outdoor welded-aluminum sculpture. Kevin continued his education at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.

After college, Barrett created sculptures for Shidoni, a bronze casting and fabricating foundry and outdoor sculpture park in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also apprenticed to a number of well known artists in New York and Europe and built sculptures for such well known artists as Herbert Ferber, Tom Wesselmann, and Alan Houser.

Barrett set up his first studio in Miami, where he worked for ten years before returning to New York City, where he currently maintains a studio and resides with his wife, Sabina, and their three daughters.

Barrett brings a deeply felt expressive content, energy, and rhythmic unity to the inherent strength and durability of his chosen medium. His success is well documented; his sculptures and wall reliefs have been shown and can be found throughout the United States and in Europe both in public and private collections.