Biography

Lois Virginia Babb on steps of Sorolla Museum, Madrid, Spain Nov. 2010

Lois Virginia Babb, growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and influenced
early in life by the transcendent beauty of the region, developed a passion to capture the
wonder she felt when viewing the majesty of God’s creation. Choosing the traditional
medium of painting in oils, Babb has been pursuing this passion for over forty years.

In 1987, after leaving a career in public relations and advertising, Babb began to paint
full time as a professional artist. Babb studied fine art at Radford University, but she
attributes her success in classical painting primarily to her years of experience and to
extensive study with some of the master painters of our time: John Szekes, Tom
Browning, Dan Gerhartz, Robert Johnson, David Leffel, C. W. Mundy, and others.
Nationally published, her fine art prints have been widely collected (one open edition
selling over fifty thousand copies); but, at present, Babb’s principal emphasis is
on the creation of her distinctive, classically derived, original works in oil.

The variety of Babb’s work precludes easy categorization; she is widely recognized for her
landscapes, paintings of children, and still life and figurative works. Babb prefers to paint
from life in the time honored plein-air and alla prima (where the work is completed in one
sitting) methods, believing this is the most honest, direct way to express her feelings about
a subject. Her work relates to that of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), who Babb cites as an
influence, and, as with Sargent, it is difficult to decide whether to classify her work as realist
or Impressionist. Perhaps the best description is to say that Babb’s paintings present her own
characteristic and unique form of realism, successfully incorporating the techniques of both
traditional realism and Impressionism. Most importantly, her works, conveying a sense of light,
warmth, softness, and sometimes nostalgia, have a timeless appeal – they are simply beautiful.

Residing on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, Babb regularly travels to
paint in Europe and along the southeastern coast of the United States