Artist Barbara Coffin enjoys envisioning “great paintings” as she views her surroundings.
For the second time in five years, local artist Barbara Coffin is holding an art show and sale to benefit The Second Chance Shop of Suffield and its parent, The Village for Families & Children.
Barbara, affectionately called Barbie by her friends, has been painting for over 50 years.
This year, she donated more than 70 framed oil paintings displayed in the Kent Memorial Library Pinney Gallery on the lower level. You can purchase her artwork until the end of November.
According to Second Chance Shop President Ellen Peterson, the exhibition sold 22 paintings at its opening reception held for Coffin on October 10th. All proceeds go to support The Village in Hartford.
In 2019, Coffin’s library art show and sale took in over $10,000 for The Village on the sale of 48 paintings.
Peterson said those revenues helped fund an art therapy program for teens at The Village to improve their ability to meet life’s challenges.
Chance Invitation to Art Class
A longtime Suffield resident, Coffin had been house-sitting for a friend in Manhattan in the early 70s when another friend invited her to an evening art class at the renowned Salmagundi Club in Lower Manhattan. That sparked her interest in painting and led to her attending a few more classes.
At the same time, she was enrolled in the New York School of Interior Design. She later ran an interior decorating business in Suffield for 22 years. She found that mixing colors and shading, which she learned to master as an artist, was a real asset in her decorating business.
As a painter, Coffin has focused primarily on landscapes. Her hobby has taken her to Belgium, Italy, France and other parts of the world. She said she’s enjoyed painting outdoors at her easel with small groups of other artists, referred to as ‘En plein air’ in the art world.