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Barbara moved to Pembrokeshire
about eleven years ago, when, she says, "I felt at home for the first time".
Her grounding in art was
in textiles. She trained at the West Surrey College of Art, and was
invited to exhibit at the Commonwealth Textile Exhibition in London. Having
moved to Wales in the late 1980s, she won a prize for her knitwear designs
in the 1988 National Eisteddfod.
self portrait
in fabric collage
 Three
years later one of her wallhangings was chosen by the BBC to be the centrepiece
of an exhibition at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells. During all this
time, however, Barbara's main passion had been painting and since moving
to Trefin, on the north coast of Pembrokeshire she has been painting, mostly
in the medium of oils, combining this with a career as a hugely popular
art teacher.
She is a highly skilled portraitist
and can often be seen in the area, quickly sketching subjects as they go
about their daily tasks. To some of these studies she gives her own pet
names, and from these has evolved a series of paintings of Gwilym, Dilys
and Mary.
One old gentleman from Solva
proved such a characterful subject that Barbara found that she had been
following him for most of the morning. The gentleman was quite disappointed
when she explained what she was doing....
Her mother (also one of her
models) jokes that she is quite certain that Barbara will soon be
on the front page of the local newspaper, "Pembrokeshire Artist arrested
as a stalker!" |
