biography

Barbara E Shepard studied at Goldsmiths School of Art (1967-69) and Manchester University adding: dance, drama and video to her repertoire, to graduate with a BA in 1985.

Her artistic career has straddled commercial and public projects. In the late1960's she worked as a graphic artist for a record company, designing and illustrating record sleeves and advertisements for the music press. In the early 1970's she worked for the GLC initiating creative and art based projects, for young people on inner city adventure playgrounds. This was followed by a successful career in antiques 1978-81.

Whilst a student at Manchester University, she exhibited in 'Women Live' exhibitions at the Contact Theatre (1984+5) and studied African drumming with Thomas Odnessa (1982-5) to performed with the 'Abisindi Drummers' in the 1984 festival.

A founder of One Peoples Theatre, with 3 other women, they toured throughout the West Yorkshire region (1985-6), combining multimedia performances and workshops. Alongside this she initiated a number of community art projects (mainly murals) and tutored in painting, drawing and video at Adult and Further Education colleges.

Since 1982 Barbara E Shepard used photography and video and in her work and in 1986 was video artist for 'Sister 7 performance Residency at Rochdale Art Gallery. Later that year she created Interior Visions a solo exhibition of: paintings, sculpture and photographs for the gallery.

After qualifying with a PGCE at Manchester Polytechnic (1987) specialising in painting and ceramics she continued to combine teaching in Adult and Further Education, with free lance community art and mural projects, private sales and commissions. 

She also studied part time for a Masters in 'Women's Studies', at Bradford University (1988-91) but during the course she took a gap year to establish a new position as Arts Development Officer for Greater Manchester Youth Association (1987-90), before returning to complete the MA alongside the development work.

With an interest in eastern esoteric, Barbara E Shepard practised yoga since 1968, Tai Chi from 1982, and Qigong since 1989 firstly with Michael Tse, then Master Chu, and recently Dr Bingkun Hu. Her academic, artistic, and esoteric interest has been to explore the link between mind and body. From the early 1980's she engaging in psychotherapy and healing processes. This stimulated creativity in personal work as well as influencing themes for community and educational projects.

She was an invited member of the Visual Arts Panel for West Yorkshire Arts (1987-90) and Yorkshire and Humberside Arts (1990-1). In 1991 and 92 she received individual production awards from the arts council to create new works and was one of 2 artists to exhibit in a show, she aptly titled 'The I of the Beholder', at Bradford University Gallery. In the Balance is one of the full length nude self portraits the exhibition. Linked to this theme her concern with personal development led her to create 'Inside Out' an art therapy project devised for women to visually explore the participants felt sense of living in body.

As her subject matter, academically and creatively and personally converged on the topic of identity and the body, she trained in therapy. Since 1993 she has worked as a CranioSacral Therapist alongside practicing and teaching dance and Qigong.

Meanwhile she has continued to hone her craft, by carrying out a large number of small pastel and medium sized landscape studies worked directly from views of her home town and surrounding countryside and sold locally as prints.

In summer 2000 she was invited to take part in the Millennium Celebrations, joining a leg of a boat trip around the UK. As artist in residence, she engaged groups of young people in recording the Scottish part of journey in photography and paint.

A lifelong lover of dance, Laban influenced contemporary dance had formed part of her degree at Manchester University.  Following a chance meeting with Egyptian musicians in 1989 she began to study Egyptian dance, with the Raqs Sharqi Society and world renowned dancers and choreographers Suraya Hilal and Alessandro El Bascioni.  She also took salsa classes and from 2005 has been a serious Tango devotee and has been tutored by a number of famous Argentinean dancers.  Concentrating initially on practicing the physical side of this creative form, she began to integrate it into her visual art practice using photography as the basis for creating digital imagery and paintings. Her interest is in the spiralling energy of the dance and quality of contact between the dancers.

There are 2 strands to her recent works. They focus on intimate expressions based on the male nude from a female perspective and on transcendental and emotional expression through dance in tango and whirling dervishes.

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copywrite Barbara E Shepard 2011