I thank God for the talent He has given me for within art I have found challenge, joy, and fulfillment.
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Barbara Schmid-Egr, a born and raised Midwestern girl, always loved creating art, reading, and searching for fairies in her back yard. As a child, she would use pen and ink, copying drawings from her grandmother’s dictionary. She attended Omaha’s Central High School because of its close locale to Joslyn Art Museum. This artist’s grandmother had a 1947 Webster dictionary. When disagreements occurred, withing the family concerning a word’s spelling, Gram’s dictionary solved the problem! As a child, her mother allowed her to copy the delicate line drawings found in the dictionary. Barbara was given some ink and a brush. This is how her love of painting with watercolor began! Although Barbara eventually became an elementary school teacher, she never stopped painting!
As a multi-media artist, her greatest influences came from her grandmother, who first recognized her artistic ability, her sweet, funny, mother who supported her efforts, and her kind, gentle father’s strong Christian values which shaped the character of her family unit. Today, Barbara enjoys living in Bellevue with her husband, Emmett, and Joe Cocker, the family pooch. She displays her art at The Passageway Gallery located in Omaha’s Old Market, Nebraska City’s Self Expressions Gallery as well as the Grain Bin Antique Town in North Platte, Nebraska. She serves as Omaha Artist’s Inc. Art Club’s president. Often, Schmid-Egr participates in art shows around town. She is the recipient of several awards and enjoyed attending plein air workshops with Karen Ramsey and Tim Horn.
Barbara Schmid-Egr earned a commercial art degree, then returned to school and earned a Masters Degree. At this point, she realized she was an artist who taught first grade. Fifteen years flew by until she left the classroom and joined a co-op gallery in Omaha’s Old Market.
Her work’s themes focus on commonplace beauty, unusual perspectives, and presenting a tension in which the viewer “connects the dots.” This problem of figuring out the story happens as children realize Granny may be in for trouble when Red Riding Hood notices the wolf’s big teeth. The child has “drawn an inference.” Egr often brings joy to her viewers through titles and the use of her grandmother’s 1947 dictionary pages to “literally” draw inferences! For example, she painted a young girl swinging on the dictionary page with the word “strong.” Dandelions were illustrated on the dictionary page with the word “childhood.”