Please welcome our first featured member, BarbBarcikKeith. Bellow is an interview with the artist and a gallery of some of her work.

Tell us about yourself (name, where you live, where you are from, family, etc.)
My name is Barb and I live in Maple Heights Ohio. This is the state I was born in a VERY long time ago. I am in my second marriage and it looks like this one is going to stick (23 years and counting). I have 2 sons from a former marriage and they are both married, with kids.

Share a short profound or funny story from your life
Profound? Surviving cancer is about as profound as I can get.

What is your favorite artistic medium?
Favorite artistic medium is whatever I happen to be using at the time. Colored pencils took over from pastel and pastel from oil.. all the way back to graphite pencils.

How did you became interested in or what draws you to this form of art?
I started doing wildlife art in the seventies as a way of staying sane because I was at home with 2 pre-schoolers.. usually speaking in one syllable words. It soon became an obsession. It started with big cats and has evolved into just about everything.

You have submitted a lot of excellent artwork of Amphibians, what is it that draws you to these creatures?
The reason I started doing frogs was because everything else was black-white-brown-grey.. and my pencils had a lot more colors. It was so much fun to do red-eyed tree frogs because I got to use all kinds of colors!! They are still my “go to” models when I NEED some vibrant colors.

Show us your favorite work or one of your favorites
My favorite – when it comes to frogs is “Sevens”. All you have to do is look at it to see why.

Show us your favorite or one of your favorite works of someone else on RB and tell us what draws you to the work
I don’t really have a favorite artist.. there’s actually a bunch of them and it’s hard to pick just one.

Anything else you would like to share with us:
As for sharing anything else.. I love what I do and am amazed at times – that I can actually do it. I surprise myself a lot.. especially since the advent of cancer. My work is changing on a daily basis. Should be interesting to see how far this goes.

Inspiring work Barb, congrats on this well deserved feature………… Dave

fantastic work barb, you are so talented, i love viewing your works x di