Brenda Behr Bio

Brenda Behr’s representational paintings combine her eye for detail with a heart that captures the essence of her subject. She prefers painting from life or on location, but is equally comfortable painting from photos. “I am not one to make photographic images of my subjects; I want to breathe life into them with my paint, whether they be people, landscapes or landmarks,” she explains.

Brenda is one of those blessed individuals who has found a way to build a life around the things she loves most — painting and travel.  

Born in Charles City, Iowa, she was only three when the United States Air Force shipped her family off to England. At the age of nine, she received private oil lessons at the base hobby shop in the Philippine Islands. When her dad retired from the military in the early 1970’a, her parents dropped sail in Goldsboro, North Carolina. 

Painting is Brenda’s second career. Thinking it a more sure way to make a living with her art, she earned her B.F.A. in Communication Arts and Design at Virginia Commonwealth University. For almost 33 years, the advertising hub of Minneapolis was where the artist honed her visual communication skills through graphic design and art direction.  In 1976, she enrolled in an oil figure painting class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. At the same art school in 1981, she began to study watercolors. Her continuing studies of both watercolors and oils have included workshops with nationally known painters including the late Robert E. Wood, Cheng-Khee Chee, Frank Webb, Charles Reid, Albert Handell, and Susan Sarback. In 2003 Brenda moved “home” to Goldsboro to care for her aging mother, and the new course of her life was set. She now works full time as a professional fine artist, selling her works through the galleries.

Like many artists, I sometimes feel compelled to prove how well I can copy “reality”, how real I can make my subject matter look, or I am commissioned by someone else to do this.

In a nutshell, here’s what it has taken me my life as an artist to conclude . . . The older I get, the more I know that children know more than I do what drawing and painting are all about. It’s about seeing and showing green the way we saw it the first time. It’s about seeing and depicting our mothers, the way we saw her for the first time. It’s about first impressions and about expressing those first impressions.

Further than this, it’s about showing our first, most impacting impressions using value, form, and color in a way that is aesthetically appealing.

When I can do the aforementioned and do it consistently, I will consider myself a successful artist. Until then, I’m enjoying the journey, and especially enjoying it when someone else finds pleasure in my perspective. I hope that you’ll enjoy my views.