Washington Art Association is pleased to present How I Got Here: Space, Color and Pattern, an exhibition of paintings by Barbara Grossman. On view from June 27 through August 8, 2026, the exhibition brings together paintings from across Grossman’s career, tracing her engagement with interior spaces, color relationships and the human figure.

Rather than treating interiors as static settings, Grossman constructs them as living environments built through interval, repetition and chromatic tension. Her work has remained steadily committed to the language of painting: shape against shape, color against color, figure against ground.

Born in New York, Grossman studied at Cooper Union and the Akademie der Künste in Munich. Awards and honors include the Benjamin Altman Prize from the National Academy of Design, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowship, the Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, and a Fulbright-Hayes Grant. She has taught at the Yale School of Art, the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, the New York Studio School, Western Connecticut State University and the Chautauqua Institution. 

Grossman is a member of the National Academy of Design and was a founding member of Bowery Gallery in New York. Her work has appeared in exhibitions at the New York Studio School, Dartmouth College, Washington and Lee University, the National Academy of Design, Hollins University, The Arkansas Art Center and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Her paintings are held in numerous public collections including the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and the Housatonic Museum of Art. 

How I Got Here: Space, Color and Pattern is a retrospective exhibition of Grossman’s work, bringing together paintings from across decades, revealing a long-term, dedicated exploration of color, pattern, and the expressive potential of intimate, familiar spaces.