| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: |
Barry took up art while convalescing after he broke his ankle in high school. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War and after the war ended he enrolled at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto where he studied painting. He graduated with honours in 1949 and returned to Edmonton where he began teaching art classes for the University of Alberta Department of Extension. Over the next twenty years, together with fellow artists Henry G. Glyde, Harry Wohlfarth and Jack (J.B.) Taylor, he travelled throughout rural Alberta providing a variety of art programs and encouraging the development of the visual arts. The Department of Extension played a prominent role in establishing art classes and clubs throughout the province. This network of clubs would become the Alberta Community Art Classes Association, and later the Alberta Community Art Clubs Association. He taught art classes as far away as Yellowknife and Hay River in the North West Territories, and Dawson City in the Yukon. In 1966 he taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts and in 1967 he spent a year travelling and studying in Europe. He later became the chairman of the Art Department of the Faculty of Extension before his retirement from the University. He is well known as a landscape painter in oils, acrylics and watercolours. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Alberta Government, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Government House Foundation and several major corporations. He has also completed murals for public buildings including 15 painted panels for Our Lady of the Angels Church in Fort Saskatchewan and a relief cast wall and sculptured altar for St. Anthony's Church in Edmonton. He is also known for his portraits such as that of the Honourable Dr. Irene Parlby that hung for several years in the Legislature Building in Edmonton as well as a portrait of Dr. McNally that hangs in the Senate Chamber at the University of Alberta. He has participated in over thirty group and individual exhibitions throughout the province. |