PRIMITIVE_ART

Barbara Raymond Stewart was born in Schenectady, New York on April 2, 1941. She got involved at an early age as a child actress on various radio programs. Her family eventually settled in a suburb of Miami, Florida. She studied acting at the Ruth Forman school as a young girl and eventually did some modeling. In 1959 she came out to California with the idea of breaking into movies and she moved into the Hollywood Studio Club, a YWCA facility for young, aspiring actresses. She has appeared in nearly 400 films since then. In 1968 she began painting little paintings that she signed "Lyn", (her middle name), which she gave away to friends and eventually the Ellsworth Gallery in Newport Beach took a liking to them and began to sell them. Eventualy a member of the Guggenheim family bought four of them and called them "The Four Seasons". Later she exhibited at numerous galleries including the Village Artistry in Carmel, the Copenhagen Gallery in Solvang and the Emerson Gallery in Encino, the Gallery Hawaii and many others. One of her paintings, "God Bless Us All With Love" was picked to represent Christmas by the city of Carmel in 1976. In the same year, four of her paintings were selected by a prominent art publisher to be put into their print catalogue. In her final years her works were featured at the Lyon's Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her paintings are in numerous collections. Her painting style can be described as primitive, naive, and has been described as "Grandma Moses injected with a little Wysocki and Streeter Blair." Barbara paints mostly of her memories of growing up in up-state New York (Schenectady). Some of her characters seem to be painted with a single-haired brush, but always with affection. Barbara passed away in 2000 from a bout with Crest Syndrome and she is greatly missed.