Barb Allen was educated at Southern Illinois University where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Art Education.  For the next 34 years she taught art  in a public high school while continuing to grow as an artist.  She did post-graduate work at SIU with Erin Palmer.

She did a series of prints of local historical interest and artwork for her most famous client, Ozzie Smith.  In 1996 she was selected as Illinois Teacher of the Year and spent a year traveling and speaking to schools across the country and Japan.  That same year she also won the prestigious Milken Educator Award.  She retired from teaching in 2005 and is pursuing her love of painting.  She studied with portrait artist Mary Minifie in 2006, with the legendary portrait painter Everett Raymond Kinstler in 2007, with Micheal Shane Neal in 2009 and 2011 and with Casey Baugh in 2011 and 2012.  Barb’s studio is in beautiful southern Illinois at the edge of the Shawnee National Forest where she lives with her husband, Gary.  Their son, Sam, lives and works in Manhattan.