Barbara Steel was born in 1939, an inauspicious year! She was evacuated to Wales with her mother, and later to family in Middlesbrough. When she was four she went back home to South London. She was brought up largely by her grandparents until the age of 11. At 17 she went to Camberwell School of Art. The first two years were given over to a craft, lettering, life drawing etc. Another two years were spent on a specific subject, in her case painting. Awarded the Anna Berry Memorial Prize, she spent a fifth year at Camberwell. In that year Frank Aurbach joined the teaching staff. He was an important influence – so too were Robert Medley and Vernon Shearer. On leaving Camberwell, she studied lithography at Croydon School of Art, and taught in various schools, evening institutes and Guildford School of Art. This was interspersed with traveling through France, Spain, Gibraltar and Morrocco, where the colours made a lasting impression. 

 

In 1981 she moved with her husband and daughter to Lyme Regis, Dorset, and began to work full-time as a painter. The landscapes were  particularly stimulating, but she also painted seascapes, flowers and portraits. She has exhibited at the South London Gallery, Piccadilly Gallery, Simon Bartly Gallery, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Dorset Museum, Dorchester, and locally at the Town Mill Gallery and the Philpot Museum. The paintings shown here are a selection of her work and show treatments of subjects she has returned to over many years. The recent South London paintings, based on old drawings, are about people and places from her childhood.