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Anne
Meredith Barry was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1932. At
an early age Barry expressed an interest in taking art
lessons. Her mother, who encouraged her children to
discover their own interests, opted to work a part-time
job in order to send Barry to a private school that
balanced conventional schoolwork with art instruction.
In
1954, following her graduation from the Ontario College
of Art, Barry started painting on a regular basis. In
the years to follow, she also married and began a
family. A career success came in 1969, when she was
included in the prestigious City of Montreal Art
Exhibition.
Barry
took part in several community art development programs
as both artist and teacher, including the Outports Arts
Foundation which led her to Newfoundland in 1971. The
rugged landscape of Newfoundland so intrigued her that
after returning to Toronto, she continued visiting
Newfoundland to paint, make prints, and instruct
workshops for Memorial University Extension Service and
St. Michael's Printshop. In the coming decades, she led
workshops across Canada, being very active in art
outreach programs, particularly in Ontario and British
Columbia.
In
1986, when St. Michael's Printshop was relocated from
the Avalon Peninsula's Southern Shore to St. John's,
Barry and her husband, John, bought and refurbished the
original printshop building in St. Michael's and moved
to Newfoundland permanently.
In
the years since, Barry has contributed much to the arts
community in Newfoundland, concentrating on both
painting and printmaking. Barry's work is often
described as distinctive, bold, and colourful –
presenting the land as she sees it, not just as it is.
In
1998, the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador
organized Down North: A Coastal Journey, an exhibition
of prints, mixed media works and paintings on paper. The
exhibition was based on Barry's 1993 coastal voyage on
the Northern Ranger, on which she sailed from Lewisporte,
Newfoundland north along the Labrador coast as far as
Nain. Down North was circulated nationally by the
Blackwood Gallery, Erindale College, University of
Toronto.
Throughout her career,
Barry has extensively exhibited her artwork in solo and
group shows both internationally and within Newfoundland
and across Canada. Among
the most notable of these exhibitions, her work
travelled to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan
as part of the exhibition True North: The Landscape
Tradition in Contemporary Canadian Art, curated by
David Liss in 1999.
Barry received an honorary
doctorate from Memorial University of Newfoundland in
1998. Her work can be found in private and public
collections including the Art Gallery of Newfoundland
and Labrador's Permanent Collection; the Art Gallery of
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory; Emily Carr College of Art
and Design, Vancouver, BC; Tom Thomson Memorial Art
Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario; Artists for Kids Trust,
North Vancouver, BC; and the Governor-General of
Canada's Collection.
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