Barbara Cox of West Windsor has a new exhibit at Plainsboro Library –– a collection of watercolors on display throughout July. There will be a reception on Sunday, July 15, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Cox was raised in Ohio. She graduated from the University of Akron with a degree in art education. After her student teaching in Ohio, she married and moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, where her husband was stationed. She tried to return to teaching art only to find out that “the art rooms were being used as science rooms and art classrooms were on a cart.” Her teaching was put on hold when their three children were born. “We had horses and I had to stay home in case someone got hurt,” she says. (The News, June 10, 2011).
Cox and her late husband moved to West Windsor 12 years ago. “We moved from Berkeley Heights to be near our daughter, Deanna, and help her with the children,” says Cox. “We were one of the first to move into Village Grande.” Her husband died in 2010.
Her oldest son is a physician and dabbles in photography and her youngest son works to “protect computers.” Deanna, now a first grade teacher at Dutch Neck School, is raising her three children in West Windsor.
About 20 years ago Barbara began teaching at elder hostels (now called Road Scholars). “I thought it would be a bunch of older boring people but I found teaching more exciting than painting,” she says. “The attendees, mostly in their late 60s and early 70s, were ready to sleep and drink art for a week and learned quickly. Art was waiting for them to pursue it.”
Cox enjoys the inspirational scenery found in the New Jersey coastline and farmlands as the motivation for most of her paintings. In addition to having more than 20 solo shows, she has paintings hanging in private and corporate collections. More than 30 of Barbara’s paintings hang exclusively at the Kansas City corporate headquarters of the Independent Telephone Network.
Her greatest joy as a professional artist is to teach others — with workshops in New Jersey, Ohio, and scheduled sessions of Elder Hostel in Cape May for the fall.
Art Exhibit, Plainsboro Public Library, 9 Van Doren Street. Sunday, July 15, 2 to 4 p.m. Reception for an exhibit of watercolor paintings by Barbara Cox of West Windsor. On view to July 30. 609-275-2897. www.lmxac.org/plainsboro.
