Artwork by Barbara Hefford

Artist profile: Barbara Hefford

Barbara Hefford
1929-2016

Drawing and painting were always central to Barbara Hefford’s life, and she was rarely seen without a sketchbook in her hand. She was a great observer of people and her environment, and communicated this with flair and sensitivity in her watercolour and acrylic painting and printmaking. 

An exhibition, which is being held just one year after her death, represents the last major sale of work from her estate. While some of the works have been exhibited before, many have been in her own collection up to this point and have not been seen by the general public.

Barbara came from a long line of artists, which included the early New Zealand painter Charles Blomfield, who was her great-great-uncle. She began her formal training in art at the Elam School of Art in 1946, then went on to study at the Ilam School of Fine Arts 1948-51, from where she graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts.

In the 1950s and 1960s she provided illustrations for the New Zealand School Journals and undertook commissioned portraits, specialising in children and animals. She also taught art in schools around the Wellington region.

Following her retirement from teaching in 1980 she was able to take up painting fulltime as well as branching out into printmaking.  She exhibited widely in the Wellington region and was an exhibiting member of the Academy of Fine Arts, Watercolour New Zealand, and both the Hutt Arts Society and Mana Arts Society. In the late 1990s she began book illustrating again and has her work in several New Zealand poetry books and biographies, as well as some children’s books.

 In 2015 she moved to live in Hastings and was still painting up to the last couple of months of her life.