About the Artist

Doris Barahona was born in Santiago, Chile, but has been living in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 1997. She is an abstract painter with realist tones. She is primarily a mixed media artist, including shellac, India inks, and oil in her work. Doris has always had a "thirst to learn" which has led her to explore painting by doing a residency with Andy Braitman, as well various workshops with well-known artists around the country.  She studied Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and later earned her PhD in Education from UCLA. She has spent the last 26 years in education and continues to be involved in K-12 learning through her involvement in Odyssey of the Mind. 

Doris believes that the juxtaposition between intellect and creativity is part of the never-ending process of being an artist. She creates based on the process of thinking and letting go, where one feeds the other in a continuous loop of breakthroughs. Her art reflects the patterns in nature that surround her. Her aim is not to paint a tree but to paint “treeness”, thus capturing the essence of the objects around her allowing the viewer to reach their own conclusion about what they see. 

She was selected to be one of the class of 2023 ArtPop Street Gallery artists where her piece entitled “Earth and Sky” was featured on a billboard in Times Square as well as on local billboards and digital installations around the country. She was recently selected by ArtPop to join their Board to help continue the mission of ArtPop to support local artists and to make art accessible to all in the community. In 2023, Doris won second prize at Mooresville Arts Springfest for “Murmur in the Wind” and was selected to have her piece “Purple Rain”  included in the new Novant Health Agnes Binder Weisiger Breast Health Center.