Biography

Barbara graduated from the University of Calgary with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction and was awarded the Faculty's Gold Medal for highest academic standing in 2007. However, she has been exhibiting and selling her work since 1993. Her international exhibitions of note are SOHO, New York City, Denver, Colorado, and a private display of her portraiture in Gosheim, Germany. Barbara has received many awards and scholarships during and after her academic career, including placing as runner up in the St. Thomas/Elgin National Student Art Competition, of which she was awarded an exhibition in St. Thomas, Ontario along with Alberta Foundation for the Arts funding. 

Barbara is a multi-media artist who enjoys switching her media based on her concepts. She regularly rotates through drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and portraiture of both people and pets. Within these realms, she is exploring the individual, whether it is human, animal, specific species of trees or stone. Continually searching for the interconnections between all things, her initial contact begins with research. Be it interacting with people or pets before drawing them, or in the case of trees and stone, delving into different cultural and spiritual beliefs relating to them from around the world both past and present, she is looking for underlying commonalities.

After teaching art in Calgary at Mount Royal University and the North Mount Pleasant Arts Centre, and serving as Treasurer on the Board of the Alberta Printmakers' Society, the artist relocated to Nakusp, BC where she opened her studio to teaching a variety of art classes, while sharing her own creative process with her students.  She recently received Mentor Grant funding through the ALFA Guild and the Columbia/Kootenay Cultural Alliance to teach local art guild members.

To see Barbara's portraiture, go to www.artincanada.com/barbaramaye