I am an observational painter. I like looking at the world and the people around me. I am concerned with getting the air, light and tone of a painting or drawing, so a viewer might feel the heat of a summer day or the quiet of a solitary room or the explosion of color and fragrance in a bouquet of flowers. I want to depict the relationships of color and tone as accurately and economically as possible, to convey a richness of experience, sensation and emotion without sentimentality or excess. I want to paint the world I see and smell and hear-only better.
Bio
A native of Baltimore, Barbara Epstein Gruber’s artistic aspirations were brought to an abrupt halt at age six when Mrs. Epstein discovered her going full Rembrandt on the wall behind the living room sofa on moving day. This Crayola-on-plaster endeavor went largely unappreciated (indeed, whatever scant appreciation existed was drowned by the sound of Mrs. Epstein’s anguished screams), and it would be many years before Ms. Gruber began to paint seriously. She attended Catonsville Community College, received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, studied in the graduate fine arts program at the University of Pennsylvania and continued to Brooklyn College where she earned her MFA.
Ms Gruber’s work has been chosen for solo and group shows. Her paitings and drawings have won Best in Show and Honorable Mention awards on national and regional levels by such esteemed jurors as Klauss Kertess, Bernard Chaet, Samuel Hoi, George Gurney and Doreen Bolger, Her paintings and drawings are held in private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and the UK. Ms. Gruber is currently an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Johns Hopkins University. Most recently she was the 2024 Artist in Residence at the International Institute of Color and Theory in Bucharest which culminated on a solo show of the residency paintings.
