About Barbara Woods

I believe in celebrating the natural beauty in life through visual art. As a child, nothing brought me more happiness than drawing and painting, spending quiet hours during summer vacations with a small set of colored pencils. I relished re-inventing the beauty that I could see in the ordinary moments of life all around me.

At the age of seventeen, I was admitted to the Fine Arts program at Carnegie Mellon University located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I developed my skills further as a commercial artist by studying at the Ivy School of Professional Art. After completion of both programs, I worked for Kaufmanns and Hornes, well-known retail department stores located in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I produced countless layouts for catalogues, newspaper ads, posters, billboards, cards, and shopping bags. I enjoyed creating artwork and scenery for backdrops on fashion photo shoots, as well as creating logos and signage for in-store eateries. As time went on, I was promoted to art director overseeing a variety of projects and managing a staff of commercial artists. My experience in commercial art also gave me the experience to produce complete ad compaigns.

During this period in my career, I became increasingly interested in freelance projects where I could pursue two of my favorite subjects, portraiture and wildlife art. I produced many garden illustrations for Marc Advertising, a Pittsburgh-based advertising company. The final, ready-to-print versions depicted a variety of scenes including many types of flowers, birds, patio stones, fences, and pottery. Subjects also included festive scenes with holiday decorations and bows, as well as several species of pine trees decorated with Christmas ornaments. Along this artistic path, I illustrated a line of greeting cards sold in gift shops throughout the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The artwork included a cast of characters; ducks, shorebirds, butterflies, backyard birds, rabbits, cats, and geese, roaming in a backdrop of flowers, splashing in ponds, or dancing by shells at the sea shore.

Shortly after, I founded Barbara Woods Studio to pursue my love of art on a new and exciting level. More and more paintings of wildlife filled my studio, some included settings of national parks. I participated in wildlife art shows - throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York State where I met many wonderful people along the way. Their smiles and stories came together in some of my portrait paintings, giving us a glimpse of happy moment in their lives. For example, one portrait tells the story of two children finding delight in a frog they captured by the lake, while another shows two puppies playing under the Christmas tree. For me, those moments were immersed in the colored shades of my paints, even now, my canvas is ready for the next adventure.

Awards and Press Coverage

In 1998, my painting of ospreys with their wetlands nesting site entitled "Out of the Blue" was selected as the winning entry to receive the New York State Migratory Bird Stamp award.
View "Out of the Blue" | Read more about "Out of the Blue"
I was awarded the 1998 Arts for the Parks Competition top 200 placement for my painting depicting the inside of the stationary steam engine house located at plane #6 on the Allegheny portage railroad.
I received an award in 1998, from Arts for the Park Competition, ranking in the Top 100 for my painting of an old railroad bridge on the C&O canal in the eastern United States.
In 1999, I also received an award from Arts for the Park Competition, ranking in the Top 200, for my painting of Lockhouse 49 on the C&O canal.
In 1997, I recieved the Award of Merit from the Westmoreland Art and Heritage Festival, for my oil painting of a stillife depicting grapes on the vine, a basket of flowers and some pumpkins all under the canopy of the autum sun.

Exhibitions and Shows

My work has been exhibited at many of the wings and wildlife art shows at the National Aviary, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Nature Art Festival located in Jamestown, New York.

My paintings chosen by the National Park Academy to be in the top 100 were also on tour around the United States for a period of one year. The top 200 paintings selected, including my work, were displayed in art galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Over the past several years, my entries into the Federal Duck Stamp Contest have been on exhibition at the Wildlife West Festival in the San Bernardino County museum. Other paintings have been exhibited at the college of New Jersey and also at Marietta College in the state of Ohio.