The artist primarily paints landscapes en plein air in the mediums of pastel and oil, though she often does pencil studies of uncommon objects including Chinese food carton boxes and old tools.

    Her paintings have been shown abroad as well as locally and are in numerous private and corporate collections, and in the Sandpiper Gallery on Commercial Street in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod. She is a charter member of the Cape Cod Plein Air Painters.

    Dr. Barrett is also an accomplished art teacher, having been named the Massachusetts Visual Arts Teacher of the Year for 2001 by the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts in Education, and in 2002 she received the Massachusetts Middle School Art Teacher of the Year award from the Massachusetts Art Education Association. Her writings about teaching art are included in Flower Teachers: Stories for a New Generation, published by the National Art Education Association. Dr. Barrett, the retired Art Department Head for the Holyoke Public Schools, is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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