Featured Artist – Barbara Levine

Barbara paints in oils and in gouache. She loves the texture and fluidity of oil paints and the ease with which you can layer the paint. She says that although gouache is a water based paint and can be used in ways similar to watercolors, it is more opaque and can be layered as well. She notes that these days both have an enormous variety of colors available to use and to mix. 

Barbara learned to paint primarily “en plein air” in a New England impressionist tradition and she says that it has been a wonderful adventure for her. She comments that being outside trying to capture in paint the light at particular moments as it flows onto or around the forms one is looking at can be extremely exhilarating.

Barbara has a Masters Degree in Social Work and many, many years of postgraduate trainings in the field of psychotherapy. She says that she is sometimes tempted to say her work is somewhat disconnected from painting but realizes that it has taught her to be especially observant and aware of subtle visual nuances which has helped in her painting. Her training in painting has been through years of local, national and international workshops. Her teachers have included: Gloucester artist David Curtis, Boston artists George Nick, Charlotte Gibbs, Robert Cormier, and Michael Dowling, Israeli artist Elie Shamir, and nationally and internationally known artists Kelly Carmody, Victor Butko, Scott Christenson, Ann Blair Brown, Lori Putnam, and Kevin Macpherson.