Barbara Owen earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY, and an Interdivisional BA in Sculpture and Poetry from Bennington College in Bennington, VT.
Owen’s art has been reviewed by and featured in Art in Embassies Collection Catalogue, Studio Visit, Volume 9, International Edition, ArtScope Magazine, Take Magazine, Big Red and Shiny, The Providence Journal, Newport Mercury, The Record Review, South Coast Today, NetWorks Rhode Island Artist Video Portrait Series and Repair: Sustainable Design Futures, edited by Markus Berger and Kate Irwin, illus. p.136, 139. Routledge, London, and New York
Owen has been a visiting artist critic at Rhode Island College, BFA Painting Department (2022), School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, BFA (2022), The Teaching Gallery at HVCC (2017), RISD, INTAR Summer Program (2016, 2017) and in 2018 was awarded the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artists Program at Wheaton College.
Selected Solo and group exhibitions include: Chelsea Walls (NYC), Spring/Break Los Angeles (CA), Untitled Miami (FL), Tiger Strikes Asteroid GVL (NC), Jamestown Art Center (RI), SVA Flatiron Gallery (NYC), Dedee Shattuck Gallery (MA), Redwood Library and Athenaeum (RI), Collar Works (Troy, NY) LabSpace (Hillsdale, NY), Bristol Art Museum (RI), Newport Art Museum (RI), UMass Dartmouth (MA) Art-in-Embassies (Papua New Guinea and Suriname).
She has been awarded residencies nationwide, including Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, CA (2000), Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, NY (2002), and MASS MoCA/Assets for Artists, MA (2015).
She lives and works in Rhode Island and Brooklyn, New York