Biography Painter and photographer Barbara Osterman has lived in the Bucks County area since 1964. Ms. Osterman studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and has a BFA from Tyler School of Art and an MA from Beaver College. As a teacher of art, Barbara Osterman taught art for many years at the Abington Art Center, Bucks County Community College, Moore College of Art, and Artworks of Princeton, New Jersey, as well as summer seminar programs throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. For her distinguished efforts in Art Education, Osterman received the 1985 Outstanding Art Educator Award from the Pennsylvania Education Association. Her abstract paintings in colored pencil and watercolor have been described as enigmatic and minimalist, with an emphasis on space as multilayered and active. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, and has exhibited at many local and national venues, including the National Association of Women Artists, the American Watercolor Society, and Phillips' Mill Annual Art Exhibitions. She participated in the James A. Michener Art Museum exhibition, The Art Gene, together with her son, photographer Mark Osterman in 2000.
Barbara Osterman has had many one person shows including The Philadelphia Art Alliance, Thomas Jefferson University, Rosemont College and at Princeton University. Some of her awards are The High Winds Medal from the American Watercolor Society, NY, The National Watercolor Society, CA, The National Association of Women Artists and The Philadelphia Sketch Club. Osterman has shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, The James A. Michener Museum in Pennsylvania, and the New Jersey State Museum gallery. Her work has been published in "The New Spirit of Watercolor" by Michael Ward, "Making Watercolor Work" by Jeanne Dobie and "Mastering Color and Design" by Christopher Schink.
She is an elected member of The American Watercolor Society, The National Watercolor Society and the Princeton Artists Alliance. She has taught at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, PA, the Newark Museum, Bucks County Community College and in Canada, Switzerland, Greece and Ireland. Artist Statement "I am interested in creating paintings that describe our new space perception as a result of outer space exploration. I see space as active and multilayered. Watercolor is my preferred medium because I can layer it (sometimes seven layers) without losing the light from the paper underneath. More recently I have been layering sheer Japanese paper with a similar effect.
Having created these new spatial structures, I am now embedding "things" in them: doorways, Sumi ink strokes and pencil lines that represent people. Underlying all my work are my personal experiences which I abstract from this particular time-space to a more infinite space-time so that others can relate to it." Another facet of my work is photography which is, of necessity,more object oriented. I try to make the objects more than they are, expressing my personal feelings." |
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