Personal Matters | Barbara Leidl | October 2026

I am a painter based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and I work mainly in portraiture, with a limited palette of earth pigments,  using traditional techniques in oil and egg tempera.  My work is a play between my interest in early painting and these traditional techniques and in contemporary portraiture.  I often place my models in what I can only describe as 'fictions.'  These stories are open to interpretation.

Artists have always copied other artists - it is such a wonderful way of learning - but I am not engaged in making a pure copy.  I put together paintings from different sources that I am particularly drawn to,  such as in Medieval and Renaissance painting. By introducing these disparate elements into my paintings,  they become a kind of assemblage of sources and motifs. 

I was born in Canada, and I received my Diploma in Painting (with Distinction), from the Alberta College of Art, and my MFA from Concordia University in Montreal.  I moved to the UK in 1996.  Living in Stroud for the past nine years,  I am inspired by the wonderful surroundings and the creative community I find here.