BARBARA THOMAS is a life-long artist. She began her art studies at age 15 at The Art Students’ League, studying life painting with American Naturalist Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978), who began his own tutelage studying with William Merritt Chase.

Barbara studied commercial art, graphic design, and illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and received her MFA degree at Art Institute of Boston/Lesley University School of Art and Design.

Before turning to painting full time in 1984, Barbara worked for ten years as an advertising art director, designer and illustrator in New York City. She then moved to the East Hampton, Long Island, where she had been coming with her family for summers since 1968. Here the open landscape became Barbara’s subject and she quickly became known for carefully crafted land and seascape paintings. Barbara showed regularly in local East End galleries before showing exclusively with Wally Findlay Gallery in New York City, from 2003-2007. She continues to show as well as work on a commission basis.

Beginning in 2001, Barbara has been teaching drawing, painting, art history and processes at schools and colleges, and most recently at The Parrish Art Museum, Guild Hall Museum, Sylvester Manor Restoration Museum, and at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. She consults for private art collectors and art curriculum development. Her work is in many private collections, and in the archives of The Bridgehampton Historical Society, Bridgehampton, New York.

Barbara’s work has been written about in national magazines: Architectural Digest, Forbes, Town and Country, The Robb Report; and regional magazines and newspapers: New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, Newsday, Dan’s Papers, Quest Magazine, Hamptons Cottages and Gardens, The East Hampton Star, The Southampton Press. Her work has been reviewed in The East Hampton Star.