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Barbara Rivera

Barbara Rivera is a Cuban-Mexican-American who was born and raised in Southern California. Rivera is an artist who is famously well known for creating art through self-teaching methods. Moreover, Rivera is well known for her Fine Art skills, ranging from paintings of children to other political statements. Rivera’s life story is an inspirational one; with her busy schedule, in a sentence, Rivera not only taught herself to learn how to paint, but she also worked full-time, raised a family, and would come back home after long hours in the office and get to work with her paintings. Rivera's passion for art grew when she was in elementary school, and grew ever so substantially in high school when she took drawing and painting classes. Rivera’s name of her artwork came to life shortly after her kids left for college; then, her drive to teach herself on how to paint was established. When it came to self teaching herself, Rivera expressed that she made “a lot of mistakes. It’s very frustrating but when something comes out to your desire if you like it, [one would say] ‘Oh, I know how to do this now.’” When it came to trying new methods, Rivera also expressed that she never shied away from adding new colors that she’s never used before. Moreover, Barbara, at times would add more to a certain color to her artwork, allowing her paintings to be viewed “hyper-realistic”, bringing her artwork into life and allowing it to pop more. Rivera finds new ideas to put a white piece of paper to life; nonetheless, Rivera, oftentimes, is found in events and fairs, where she looks for parents and children, takes pictures of them, with permission, and creates paintings based off of the photos. Recently, in 2018, Rivera quit her full time job to really focus on her strong passion for art; and with her kids being grown up, she’s able to incorporate and continue to try different mediums. Rivera also had the opportunity to be in multiple exhibitions, her latest taking place on Norse Way in Long Beach.

soundcloud.com/palaciomagazine/artist-barbara-rivera