BARBARA GOLDSTEIN: A biography
by JOY G. SPIEGEL

A successful Texas artist for more than forty years, Barbara Goldstein is now author of her first book, Travelin' Lady: How to Travel Alone Without Being Lonely. It is a title well-earned, for as they say in Texas, she has "traveled a fur piece" since the early days of her San Antonio upbringing. What's more, during these ensuing years of establishing herself in the art world, Barbara has overcome enough personal obstacles to have defeated a hundred other "would-be" achievers: a severe auto accident when she was a student at the University of Texas, a radical mastectomy as a young wife and mother of three, and in later years, a neurological neck disorder that would have defeated many a less-determined wife, mother, and artist/traveler. No wonder she has always identified herself with "the unsinkable Molly Brown," for unsinkable she has proved to be!

A stunning woman, whose svelte appearance and upbeat attitude totally belie her 70 years, Barbara is an accomplished teacher and artist whose watercolors and unique multimedia paintings are owned today by collectors throughout the world. As a Texan, she has always been proud to add "SWS" below her signature, affirming her early recognition as a "Signature Member" of the Southwest Watercolor Society. For many years, Barbara taught art classes in her Fort Worth home to adult students --all of whom still laud her unique approach. These years, she resides in Mexico.

Speaking fluent Spanish, and having frequently visited San Miguel de Allende during the years when her three children were old enough to appreciate its beauty and the warmth of its people, it became Barbara's chosen homesite after the loss of her husband and best friend, Dore Goldstein, in 1992.

In San Miguel, Barbara is now working on her next book, as well as teaching ink drawing --the proceeds of which she donates to CASA, A local charity organization. A sought-after art lecturer/instructor, frequently on cruise ships, Barbara's unique and charming approach to painting has inspired many a would-be artist. Today, having traveled the world over --setting up her easel in Parisian parks, Italian cafes, Israeli market places, and on African safari --making lasting friendships wherever she has been, despite all language barriers-- it occurred to Barbara that all the would-be travelers among the women she has met over the years shared one thing in common: they were awed by her daring-do, but even more significant, they were frankly envious of her "natural know how" in terms of travel. Frequently one or another would murmur a dubious tsk' tsk'-- wondering aloud how a women on her own would dare venture to travel so far from home!

Finally, after enough years of hearing these self-negating remarks from women who feared the thought of traveling alone, it began to dawn on Barbara that these reluctant travelers needed to know what she herself had learned "by gosh and by golly" throughout her more than thirty years of traveling solo. Thus, even as she continued to manage her home, see her children through all their life-phases, share with her husband their many mutual interests and ambitions --all the while teaching and painting, promoting her art across the country, learning to exhibit and sell it --a new idea began to grow in her mind: If so many women are afraid to travel alone, why, not tell them how I do it!

Now, some fifteen years later, Barbara's idea has become a reality in print. her recently published book Travelin' Lady: How To Travel Alone Without Being Lonely, has evolved from piles of personal notes, tape recordings, stacks of newspaper articles concerning her work and travels, as well as her delightful illustrations of exotic places she has visited --her own notes written into the corners of each drawing --a veritable "road map" for the would-be woman traveler. Written for and dedicated to all the women she has met throughout her traveling years --wives, widows, singles, young and not-so-young-- all inexperienced, and/or just plain scared to try their wings?-- Travelin' Lady not only shows and tells these would-be travelers "how", but gives them her verbal assertion: "Yes, you can!"

Less a how-to book --more a tried and true example of finding the courage to "do it!",Travelin' Lady shares with her readers the places where Barbara has been, what she has learned, and how she learned it-- sometimes the hard way! --often humorous her book is also laced with down-to-earth, caring, sharing, sometimes unexpectedly intimate, and always enlightening information, plus Travel Tips that highlight the chapters with Barbara's comments and illustrated accounts of distant places. Only recently released, Travelin' Lady is receiving impressive rave reviews, both in Mexico and Texas, where her books are now being distributed.

Barbara also is receiving wonderfully positive input from readers (including men!) as well as collectors of her art --all of whom are responding with enthusiastic "Hear-Hear's!" To quote Barbara, she "wrote her book to be as genial with its readers as having a cup of coffee with a friend," and that's what the readers feel as they turn the pages.

So, how did a youthful, inexperienced Barbara Goldstein, with a "businessman" husband and three adolescent children, initially go about the fine art of creating a life style that answered her inmost needs, even as she maintained the role of loving wife and mother throughout her long and happy marriage. Today in her early seventies, going on thirty! --a virtual Auntie Mame!-- this loving mother and grandmother, is still curious, still traveling, indeed, once-a-year rounding up her family of adult children, and their mates, and her grandchildren-- squiring them to far away places, and still inspiring would-be travelers wherever she goes.

So, what makes a Barbara Goldstein? It began in Dallas, where her family moved when she was seventeen. A "middle" child between two brothers, Barbara's parents were always loving and supportive of their daughter, already glimpsing the promise of a young woman who unquestionably had a flair for people, languages, and the arts. Fresh out of college, she landed her first job at The Dallas Times Herald, working for a brilliant and exacting advertising director --the legendary Texas newspaper man, Sam R. Bloom-- whose own very successful Bloom Advertising Agency was yet in the future. At the Times Herald, Sam took an immediate liking to the ambitious Barbara and taught her everything she needed to know about newspaper display advertising: doing her own art work, writing her own copy, selling her display ads to Dallas buyers.

Who could have imagined what a first job with a dynamic advertising man and taskmaster like Bloom would do for an eager young woman with overriding ambition --particularly in art work. Sam liked Barbara "right off," as they say in Texas, and before she grew very much older, he not only had taught her many of "the ropes" of the advertising business, but also, he deliberately had introduced her to his unmarried brother-in-law, Dore Goldstein, of Goldstein Brothers Jewelry Store in Fort Worth. Before long, the phone calls and trips back and forth between the two cities became fast and furious. Sooner than she ever could have imagined, the nineteen-year-old Barbara would exchange her advertising career for an engagement ring from Goldstein Brothers and the forthcoming job as wife of the thirty-six year old Dore.

Within the next three years, the Goldsteins were blessed with a child-a-year! --two of 'em redheads. As Gege, Tere, and Danny (Red) Goldstein grew, their Mom not only eagerly opened their eyes to art, but also to the joys of travel (Barbara's great and escalating passion) --particularly trips to Mexico, where the children began to experience a different culture, learning to speak the language, and perhaps most vital to Barbara, learning to appreciate art in all its forms. She set up her easel wherever there were people, scenery, and local children, and while she painted, she kept her own youngsters close to her easel, yet encouraged them to be open to their new surroundings, acknowledge the people, and learn to adapt to a culture so different from their own. No one could have imagined --least of all, her husband Dore-- that from her very earliest family sketches and still-life water colors, the next twenty years would find his Barbara developing into a full-fledged artist (with their middle child, daughter Tere, following instinctively in her mother's footsteps.) Barbara could never have imagined the extent to which those summers in Mexico would broaden the lives of her three children, or that her own professional career, having officially begun by drawing pastel portraits of "real live people," at the Texas State Fair Grounds, would take her "so far down the road" of an artist's life.

Back home in Fort Worth, Barbara had early sought out local establishments that graciously allowed her to set up her stool and easel --in an outer lobby, at the foot of an escalator, against a wall in a bank building-- where she would sit for hours, sketching willing passers-by, teaching herself to complete a drawing in 45 minutes so that her "buyers" could carry home their very own portraits. Thirty miles away, at the annual Texas State Fair in Dallas, Barbara joined an "artist colony" temporarily set up in a public building on the grounds to encourage young artists to prove themselves worthy by sketching people of every walk of life. For several successive years thereafter, she became a "fixture" at her easel on the Stock Show Grounds, earning money for her likenesses of customers that clamored for her skills. In this era of artistic growth, Barbara also dedicated her efforts to the "teen-age floor" of The Fort Worth Children's' Hospital, conversing easily as she sketched young patients confined to their beds and chairs --most of whom were the same age as her own children-- in three hours completing as many as five portraits, which she presented to her delighted subjects.

In an interview in 1974, reminiscing over these formative years, Barbara stated: "I have worked at carnivals, beaches, state fairs, and hospital wards --you name it." Thus, canvas by canvas, brush stroke by brush stroke --as she climbed those early rungs of the ladder to success --Barbara Goldstein, wife, mother, and homemaker, was becoming a recognized "artist." Nor did it hurt that the vivacious Barbara instinctively knew how to "sell herself." Warm, gracious, determined, but never presuming, she had the knack of enlisting entrepreneurs in Fort Worth and Dallas to allow her to display her latest paintings --in a lobby or suite of one of the downtown buildings, on the walls of a popular restaurant, in a private home-- and as her reputation grew, more and more often were her paintings accepted at affluent galleries. Thus, as the demand for her art began to escalate, Dore arranged for the playroom/den of their Tanglewood home in Fort Worth to be converted to a full-fledged studio, where, according to her specifications, Barbara would now have proper lighting and the space for tables to seat an ongoing class of adult students. In time, a permanent core of these young Fort Worth women were to become known in local art circles as "Studio Ten," most of whom have continued to paint during these succeeding 30-odd years.

When Barbara's inherent need to travel asserted itself, Dore would often accompany her on her journeys, to her delight, and through her eyes, he saw beyond the world of the jewelry store counters and lifelong customers, virtually inhaling the new atmosphere of far away places. As time passed, however, he was more and more content to "mind the store" together with his remaining brothers Abe and Jules. While other husbands may have frowned on their wives' so-called "gallivanting around," Dore understood the vital ambition --indeed, the needs his talented wife, sixteen years his junior-- and he willingly offered her the free reign and total support she needed to "become" the artist and traveler he not only recognized, but accepted as essential within her. Thus, Barbara continued to travel yearly --each trip affording her new and vital experiences, new contacts, often leading to new opportunities to place her paintings. Moreover, she was to discover that in each new locale abroad, she was able to expand not only her awareness of the world, but also her ability to communicate in foreign settings.

A natural linguist, in addition to her fluent Spanish, she made it a point to learn a handful of the most useful words in whatever part of the world she might be traveling. Once, in Israel, where, on a shop window, she recognized the meaning of the Hebrew words she had learned as a child, she delightedly began to look for other words that could enhance her vocabulary during her stay. Thus, with each successive trip to other countries, she became more and more committed to learning essential words and phrases in the native language that would help her introduce her art --to say nothing of acquiring new and lasting friendships in whichever country she might be visiting. For Barbara, it became a bonding of art and language, enhancing her life, extending her friendships, and offering greater insights to her travels abroad.

In 1992, after 43 years of marriage, Barbara's beloved Dore unexpectedly died at the age of 78 --in the midst of a golf game they were sharing one sunny afternoon! It was the greatest shock of Barbara's life, and in the deeply personal months of grief that followed, she finally decided to take a studio apartment in Paris and paint, paint, paint. She totally "lost herself" in her art, and what followed was one of her most important "showings" entitled "Paint Paris," wherein she exhibited twenty-two new paintings completed within the three months she remained in residence. Painting had now became a solace as well as her lifework, taking her abroad again and again. With a born instinct for making friends wherever she may find herself --even with a veritable fleet of naval officers she met while sketching in Venice, and where she wound up on board the ship, seated at the Captain's table for a feast in her honor --Barbara always feels "at home." People not only are drawn to her frank and outgoing personality, but also to her paintings --and in the process of every showing, every sale, she has acquired a host of steadfast friends.

As early as the 1980's, Barbara Goldstein's reputation as artist, lecturer, and teacher was becoming known throughout the world of her travels. By 1981, first numbered among her "collectors" were Moshe Dayan, whom she met in Israel --and locally, the Henry S. Miller Company and Senator & Mrs. Mike Moncrief of Fort Worth. As time went on, many other names have been added to the list, as diverse as Fort Worth's Alcon Laboratories, Actress Juliet Prowse, Los Angles, and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Jerusalem.

By 1982, when Barbara had long since recovered from the mastectomy she had suffered nine years earlier, her "artistic bent" briefly took a new turn. Even as she still continued to paint and travel, travel and paint, she conceived of a design for a bathing suit for women with single mastectomies such as her own --a designer one piece, "one-shoulder" suit that she herself modeled and which was quickly snapped up by the firm of Cole of California in New York. Many women with single mastectomies were to profit from Barbara's personal awareness of their needs.

A beautiful woman, Barbara has always been totally frank about the neurological disorder she incurred in 1981 called torticollis --a chronic twisting of the neck to one side that might inhibit the less resourceful; for Barbara, however, it's always been, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed Ahead!" After much medical research, in 1985 she located a neurosurgeon in Montreal, Canada, who offered her some positive relief; in the ensuing years, she has continued to wear a very effective neck support of her own design --a soft but firm collar, delightfully decorated with glitter and pizzazz that spell out her warning words to the overly inquisitive: "Thank You! Please don't ask"" Thus, on she strides through life - teaching, traveling appearing in public, and working long hours at her easel and/or computer.

Thus it is, that Barbara Goldstein, artist, lecturer, now author, has lived her full and rewarding life with "travel" at its core. She has scaled a mountain top in Kenya, attended a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony in Hong Kong, has experienced personal moments that have enlightened her, sometimes frightened her, often surprised her, and have continued to motivate her throughout her lifetime of travel, including such destinations as Tel Aviv, Acapulco, Venice, Portugal, Machu Pichu, and others too numerous to name. Travelin' Lady tells it all, and with a frankness and exuberance that makes the reader want to keep turning the pages.

To the would-be "travelin' ladies" who buy her book, this writer can only say that if they are not inspired by Barbara Goldstein's "how to" in terms of traveling, they don't really have the "want to" to get off their couches and go! Travel the "beacon light" that has inspired this artist and writer, treasured mother and grandmother, and friend to her friends the world over. She's written it all --the highlights, the low points, the scary moments, the lonely moments, but most important, the utter joy of a single moment, and the best part is, she is showing the rest of us "how to do it."

- JOY G. SPIEGEL, Fort Worth, Texas

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