Barbara McGivern

Barbara McGivern (born August 15, 1945 – March 9, 2019), also known as The Gold Lady, was a Canadian artist from Toronto, Ontario.

One of her best known series is The Extraordinary Journey.

The series was inspired by her trips through the deserts of Oman and Saudi Arabia, when she began incorporating the use of gold leaf into her work.

Her style is most notable for presenting gold as a colour rather than as a precious metal.

Her paintings are in private and corporate collections in Canada, Europe and the Middle East.

McGivern grew up in Toronto and for almost 40 years maintained a residence at the Manulife Centre which was a gathering place for members of the local arts community.

In 1971 she went to Europe, for five years.

Settling in London in the fall of 1974 she became a member of both The Arts Club and Chelsea Arts Club.

Returning to Toronto in 1976 she worked with Columbia Pictures Television until 1981 when they stopped producing TV programs.

McGivern then started painting at her first art studio in downtown Toronto.

Her work at that time was mostly naive and was inspired by the English artist Beryl Cook.

Around that time she got accepted by the Ontario College of Art and Design she studied under Canadian artists such as Graham Coughtry and Ian Carr-Harris.

She graduated in 1988 in Experimental Arts at OCAD.

In 1992 McGivern went to Russia where she saw works by the Impressionist artist Matisse at the Hermitage and Fernando Botero at the Pushkin, Moscow.

During the same trip she saw the Barnes Collection at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

She produced a series of paintings based on Impressionist works, with her own interpretation of The Barnes Collection, which was later shown at Musee Hotel Baudy in Giverny.

Throughout the 90's McGivern was represented by galleries in Yorkville, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton as well as Zurich, Berlin, London, Paris and Madrid.

In 1996 McGivern went on an off-road driving trip across the Middle East, following the British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger's path through the deserts of Oman and Saudi Arabia, covering 3,000 miles in eight days.

While driving through the deserts she was amazed with the colours she saw and the richness of the sands which opened up a new concept to her work, where her acrylic paintings now recounted the deserts from a Canadian prospective, using gold as a colour as opposed to a precious metal.

"My paintings are inspired by my trips, especially to the deserts of Oman and the UAE. I found the dunes to be a magical place with colours that I never thought could be possible in such a vastness of sand" stated McGivern in 1998.

She was commissioned to do 22 paintings for the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel.

Her work has been sold to major collectors such as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and the Al Qasimi, UAE as well as different corporate collectors.

When asked to do two horses for the Dubai's Celebration of Arabian Horses, her horse Victory was commissioned by Frayland and Penquin, Engineering and was the third largest winner in the auction held by Christie's for 210,000 AED.

The second horse Red Fantasy was also commissioned by Delwood Consultancy.

McGivern represented Canada at the Women & Art, 2005, A Global Perspective, Sharjah UAE.

Barbara's work has been shown in the following museum exhibitions:

Barbara's work can be found in the following museum collections:

Barbara's work has been part of the following group exhibitions:

McGivern has been commissioned by the following companies:

Barbara's work has been auctioned by the following: