Barb Symons is a Toronto-based artist whose work ranges from monoprints, life drawings and other works on paper, to large oil canvases. 

She graduated from Montreal’s Concordia University in 1975 with a BFA and has participated in solo and group shows in Ottawa and Toronto, 

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she shared a studio with Tom Hodgson, an abstract expressionist and member of the Ontario group known as Painters Eleven, who was a strong influence on her emerging style.

Winning a Jury’s choice award from Lakeshore Arts Association allowed her some financial freedom to rent a Niagara Street studio in Toronto’s Queen West hub, where she facilitated art/dinner workshops to help support her own creative efforts. 

These workshops were designed as team-building exercises to encourage creative thinking, and appealed to a wide variety of participants from womens’ clubs to children’s groups with a goal of facilitating creative responses to problem solving.