Originally from central New York, Shawn Barber is a painter living and working in San Francisco where he has also been a college professor, teaching for the Illustration department at CCA in San Francisco for 7 years.  Both vivid and painterly, the work of Shawn Barber brings beauty to the heavily pierced and widely tattooed. Barber seemingly approaches the subject in a painting as a snapshot isolating a moment where the ink penetrates the skin or when an angle feels just right.  However, it is his poetic brushstroke that transforms his work from the documenting of a moment into a work of art.  His critically acclaimed series of paintings Tattooed Portraits reflects the contrast between realistic figurative painting, art history, tattoo culture and the joy of painting.
Barber's paintings have been exhibited in diverse solo and group exhibitions in various venues including: The Shooting Gallery, The Lineage Gallery, Strychnin Gallery (Berlin), South Florida Art Center, and Arcadia Fine arts. His work is featured in the collections of Robin Williams, Mat Hoffman, Van Morrison, Christian Slater and Rolling Stone magazine's founder Jan Wenner, among others.  His paintings are held in private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, Europe and Australia.