| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Barbara Ballachey is an Edmonton-born Alberta artist. Her training includes studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts, McGill University and l’École des Beaux-arts in Montreal, and a BFA (1978) from the University of Calgary. Ballachey was a regular participant in the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops (at the time held in affiliation with the University of Saskatchewan in northern Saskatchewan), attending for ten summers between 1979 and 2005. She also participated in workshops in British Columbia and Alberta, as well as in Zambia, Marseilles, Botswana and upstate New York. Ballachey has taught watercolour, landscape and other painting classes and also helped to organize the 1994 Noon Hour Artalk Series and Art/chitecture: Exploration through Collaboration, a project with the Calgary Architecture and Urban Studies Alliance. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions held across Alberta and Canada, as well as in China, France and Africa. In 1988, she was a member of the Canadian delegation to Harbin, China to open the exhibition Spaces and Places where she delivered a lecture and a demonstration at a college in Harbin. In 2009, she participated in a Gulkistan Residency near the village of Laugarvatn, Iceland.
Her work often uses landscapes as a source of imagery, but she also has an interest in abstract painting. Ballachey describes the delight and sense of life and magic she finds in painting as the source of her passion. Her work is represented in private, corporate and public collections across North America and in Africa.
Compiled 2014 |