Colorado-born artist Sierra Montoya Barela transforms the mundane aspects of home life into vibrant, surreal paintings that celebrate interior design, houseplants, and everyday objects like birthday cakes. Her artistic work bridges the gap between the ordinary and the extraordinary, featuring clashing patterns, bold colors, and unconventional perspectives that challenge viewers' perceptions of domestic spaces.
Barela's background as a product designer significantly influences her artistic vision. She previously worked designing homeware for Urban Outfitters Home and more recently at West Elm Kids, a furniture store in Dumbo, New York. This professional experience shines through in her passion for painting mirrors, shelves, vases, chairs, tables, and other household items. Her work demonstrates a curatorial eye for composition, featuring exaggerated colors and complicated patterns that aren't afraid of clashing with one another.
The artist's paintings often blur the lines between reality and representation, making it difficult to distinguish whether a blue sky adorned with fluffy clouds is actually a painting hanging on a wall or a real window. This intentional ambiguity reflects Barela's interest in how we perceive and interact with our living spaces. "How we create our home spaces is endlessly interesting and there's a million different ways to create comfort," says Barela. "I like to give importance to the simple everyday objects that we live with."
Plants serve as central characters in Barela's paintings, symbolizing life as much as human figures would in traditional portraiture. In many ways, her pieces function as portraits of these botanical subjects. "We care for plants, we put them in our homes to make us feel good, we get them nice vessels to live in," explains Barela. "Depending on the type of plant they can be purely decorative or they could be references to my Mexican heritage and culture."
Barela's Mexican Catholic upbringing plays a significant role in her artistic expression. Much of the ornate tilework, clay objects, and interior elements featured in her paintings serve as tributes to her cultural background. This personal connection adds layers of meaning to what might otherwise appear as simple domestic scenes, transforming them into rich cultural narratives.
The artist sometimes disrupts the typical calmness associated with interior spaces by introducing flattened perspectives or creating windows into different worlds. These compositional choices offer viewers a pause from conventional representation while maintaining the cozy, intimate feeling of home environments. Her paintings capture scenes that might seem monotonous in real life – houseplants sitting still, pancakes with butter, or leftover cake from a long-past birthday party – and breathe new life into them through her unique artistic lens.
Barela's portfolio includes notable works such as "Lemonscape" (2020), "Something For You" (2021), "Warm Sun" (2021), and "Quarantine View" (2020), among others. Her piece "Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl" (2019) references the famous Mexican volcanoes, further demonstrating her connection to her heritage. Other works like "Afternoon Snack In Front Of Andrew's Painting" (2025) and "Slice Of Cake" (2021) exemplify her focus on everyday moments and objects.
Through her art, Barela doesn't merely depict where plants and humans live – she creates entirely new spaces for them to inhabit through paint. What begins as visually satisfying artwork evolves into a comprehensive tribute to how people decorate their lives and the fundamental human need to represent and celebrate life itself. Her paintings remind viewers that even the most ordinary aspects of domestic life contain beauty and meaning worth preserving and celebrating through art.
