Mixed media artist, Barbara Brotherton, now living in the Sierra Foothills, received her formal training at Cal State University at Long Beach, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts and most recently at Art Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She has exhibited at the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, ACCI Gallery, Berkeley, Claudia Chapline Gallery, Stinson Beach, and other institutions throughout California. Utilizing materials such as distressed wood, poured stone, earthy pigments, copper, silver and gold metal leaf and acid patinas, a holistic insight is reflected. This layering process plays a symbolic role in her work and represents a metaphor of natural processes like sedimentation, erosion, entropy, and the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Her travels to Turkey, Cyprus, Italy, Egypt and Japan have been a major influence in the development of her crusty surfaces in a contemporary way, and is a natural outgrowth of deep appreciation of Middle Eastern and Far Eastern culture and architecture.