Barbara Palmer-Davis
Quorum Gallery Resident Artist
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About
For thirty years, Barbara Palmer Davis has been a fixture at Laguna Art-A-Fair, where returning visitors and longtime collectors seek out her booth each summer. Three decades in one of California’s most established art festivals reflects both her steady output and a body of work that has continued to grow and change over time. She is also a member artist at Quorum Gallery, 374 Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, one of the town’s longstanding artist-run galleries. Her experience extends to the business side of the art world as well: she co-owned a gallery in Prescott, Arizona, giving her a perspective on how art reaches collectors that few working artists have.
Barbara is an explorer at heart. Rather than settling into a single medium, she has worked in depth across watercolor, oil, acrylic, and paint pouring, giving each one the time it takes to understand its particular strengths. Watercolor taught her to work with transparency, timing, and the white of the paper; oil offered richness and the ability to build and revise; acrylic brought speed and versatility; and paint pouring opened the door to letting color and chance move together on the surface. That range shows in her work and carries a sense of curiosity from one medium to the next.
That same breadth makes her a natural teacher. Because she has spent years learning each medium from the inside, she can meet students wherever they are, whether they are picking up a brush for the first time or trying to break through in a medium they already know. Her students often point to her patience as what sets her apart: she gives people room to experiment, make mistakes, and find their own way, rather than rushing them toward a particular result.
