About the Artist:
Barbara Lavallee likes to laugh. Maybe that's why she's happy when people smile at her paintings.  Barbara, who works mostly in watercolor, paints whimsical, stylized characters dressed in vibrant colors. They may be Eskimo women mending a fish net, three women lounging in a hot tub, joggers in Hawaii, Russian Orthodox churchgoers or skiers floundering down the slopes.  They all reflect her interest in people, how they live and what they do. "I prefer to portray the magnificence of man- his joy and humor, his tenacity, his ability to overcome" she says.

A native of Davenport, Iowa, and the daughter of an art teacher and a minister, Barbara grew up in Wisconsin and received a degree in art from Illinois Wesleyan University.  She taught art on a Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and went to Southeast Alaska in 1970 to teach at Mount Edgecombe, a native school near Sitka.  In 1975 she quit teaching to paint full-time, and now lives in Girdwood, a small community at a ski resort south of Anchorage, Alaska. She produces about 150 paintings a year with many of those reproduced into prints.

"I want people to have fun. If people look and smile, then I feel the art is a success."

In addition to her original artwork, reproduction prints and note cards, Lavallee is an award-winning illustrator of children's books. Her best known book, Mama Do You Love Me? is published by Chronicle Books.

We carry more prints than I am able to show here.  Please contact us for a complete listing.