Barbara Lipkin
Literary Arts; Visual Arts: Instructor, Mixed Media, Painting
I've been making art most of my life, but after retiring from a career in nursing I decided to pursue my passion for painting full time. I've taken many courses and workshops over the years in painting, drawing, sculpture, print-making and art history, so I can't claim to be self-taught, but in a sense, I think all artists are self-taught. You can learn the techniques and materials, but they are only tools to let you make your vision appear on canvas. However, I love to teach others so that they, too, can begin making art.
My paintings are all about knock-your-socks-off color. Whether the subject is a Tuscan landscape, or an image of Africa, or an abstract interpretation of the great desert mountains, I want my viewers to feel that they are in the painting, surrounded by it, engaged with it, and I want them to say, “WOW!”
"A resident of Naperville, Barbara has participated in many local shows and art fairs, including the Wells Street Art Fair, Chicago; the Geneva Art Fair, the Naperville Women’s Club Art Fair, and others. Her work has been exhibited at Woman Made Gallery, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Cook county Building, Brickton Art Center, and Northwest Cultural Council, to name a few. She has taught oil and pastel painting, and drawing at the Naperville Park District and other venues, and has been a member of the Naperville Art League for over 20 years. Her work is included in the collection of Linden Oaks Hospital and many private collections."
Barb is also a prolific writer and has published three books in her Bella Sarver Mysteries Series:
Painting Lessons:
A painting holiday in Tuscany turns deadly.
Bella Sarver is leading a painting workshop for a group of Americans from Chicago in scenic Tuscany. All goes even better than she expected, until one of the group gets murdered. Who done it and why? Is the long-ago past reasserting itself? And what about the sudden appearance of an undiscovered Rembrandt? Bella never planned to play detective, but she knows a lot about painting. So when certain facts just don't add up, she can't help but put the pieces together in a new way that reveals 'whodunnit.'
Brush with Death:
Who knew art fairs could be so dangerous? Not Bella Sarver, but the painter's first foray into the world of summer art fairs proves more complicated than she bargained for. It's not every day an artist finds a corpse in her tent, is it?
Paint a Murder:
Bella Sarver is teaching a class in Martingale Manor, an Over-55 Community. When she finds the owner of a local gift shop dead in the community’s clubhouse, she begins to discover that some of the ‘active adults’ have secrets going back a long way. Bella is also President of the Deer Creek Art League, which is in the midst of creating a co-op art gallery to serve as an outlet for their members’ work. What does this have to do with the murder at Martingale Manor? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
