Along the Line
2000
Color monotype on
BFK Rives (White) paper
Image: 7" W  x 12" H

Untitled color monotype
by Carl van Buskirk
(Barbara's Grandfather)
Circa 1920s

In the Shelter of a Parasol
2008
Color monotype on
BFK Rives (Tan) paper
Image: 11" W x 17" H

Barbara van Buskirk is best known as an artist who has been making hand printed monotypes for more than a decade. She is a native of Mars, Pennsylvania, a small town about 25 miles north of Pittsburgh. Barbara started college as an art major, switched to sociology in her sophomore year, and continued to study and practice art by taking electives in studio and art history. A decade later, she earned a master’s degree in Mass Communications at Boston University. Barbara worked as a graphic designer, writer and editor in Boston for several years before moving to Gloucester where she worked at the Cape Ann Museum. She subsequently worked at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Barbara and her husband Dave Panek have been living in New Mexico since1993.

Barbara grew up in a family where the arts were appreciated and practiced. Her great grandmother, Janet Ollie Orem van Buskirk, began studying art when she was about 40 years old and went on to paint murals in the Cleveland (Ohio) Court House. Janet’s painting Fogs of Manhattan, Spring was included in The Thirty-Fourth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. Carl Orem van Buskirk, Barbara’s grandfather, studied with Frank Duveneck at the Cincinnati Art Academy and worked as an artist until his untimely passing at the age of 43 in New York City. Carl worked as a cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, staff artist for a New York newspaper, portrait painter with an extensive body of work, and cover artist for Snappy Stories, Liberty, Collier’s and Photoplay magazines. Derek Orem van Buskirk, Barbara’s father, graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City. Derek Orem’s artistic avocation and lifelong passion was slide photography.
 
Barbara van Buskirk’s monotypes have been exhibited in a number of national and international juried shows. She has been a gallery artist in Albuquerque for 11 years, exhibiting continuously until July of 2011 when The Fisher Gallery, where her work has been represented for the past eight years, closed. Barbara’s monotypes are in public and private collections.

Barbara is in the process of creating a new body of work inspired by her travels in northern Germany in September of 2010.