Few art pieces across West Marin have been as ubiquitous as Barbara Ravizza’s blue and yellow “SAVE OUR DRAKES BAY OYSTER FARM” signs. Barbara, her sister and her close friends made 700 of the hand-painted signs, which to this day can be seen in newspapers and magazines, along highways, in restaurants and, legend has it, even in Europe.
Though the coveted signs were her most recognizable pieces, Barbara’s art often focused on the human form, and it ranged from provocative to serene. A selection of her figure drawings, large oil stick paintings and conversation pieces are featured in a posthumous exhibit on display through April at Toby’s Feed Barn.
Barbara, who died in January, had been planning an exhibit of her work for over a year. Dieter Tremp, who runs a Bolinas drawing group of which Barbara was a member, worked with her husband, John Osterweis, and the manager of their ranch, Meg Gould, to curate the exhibit.
Barbara, who lived in Stinson Beach on and off since the early 1990s, was in the drawing group for nearly a decade. Many of the figure drawings on display at Toby’s come from the work she did in the group. Single-digit numbers in small print appear at a corner of most of the drawings, representing the minutes it took her to create the piece. Her skill in capturing the human form was exceptional, Mr. Tremp said.
“She was extremely gifted,” he said. “We all got a kick out of the fact that, though the models were nude, she always put clothes on them. That’s so unique because you need to have a great amount of knowledge to draw a nude body with clothes interacting with limbs.”
Barbara was born in 1941 in Spokane, Wash., and grew up in Walnut Creek, where she spent her youth drawing and developing a love of horses. The family lived close to Ten-acre Ranch, owned by children’s author Patsey Gray, who wrote novels about horsebound adventures.
“If she wasn’t drawing, she was out seeing horses,” said her sister, Ritzie Cracker.
From a young age, Barbara was recognized by peers and teachers for her understanding of the human form. She refined her skills first at the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, and then at San Jose State University, where she studied fine art, graphic design and photography. Barbara studied cadavers to understand muscle relationships, and she kept a human skeleton in a closet when she wasn’t studying its structure.
After college, Barbara stayed in San Jose, where she designed covers for books. There she met her first husband, Mike Ravizza. The two later moved to Portola Valley before Mike passed away.
In 1992, Barbara was trying to leave the world of book design to pursue fine art. Through mutual friends she was introduced to her second husband, Mr. Osterweis, a philanthropist, investment advisor and president emeritus of the San Francisco Ballet Endowment Foundation. The couple shared a love of ballet, theater and fine art. After meeting Yuan Yuan Tan, a principal dancer for the San Francisco Ballet, Barbara did a figure drawing of him, and soon many in the company approached her for a drawing. She obliged.
“That was the thing about Barbara,” Ms. Cracker said. “She was an amazing person. If you needed something, sucked your breath in and asked her, she’d make you ask again, but she’d always say yes.”
Barbara and her husband would regularly visit his second home in Seadrift, and during the pandemic they lived full-time in Bolinas, where in the early 2000s they purchased a horse ranch from Peter Martinelli. The space was a getaway for Barbara and John to be with their horses.
Barbara’s devotion to West Marin’s rural character came through in her activism for Drakes Bay Oyster Company. Barbara, with the help of her sister and friends, painted hundreds of signs on their ranch in a span of three weeks. “It was insane! We would do like 70 signs in a day,” Ms. Cracker said. “But the experience really was so fun and full of love—we had wine and cheese and animals all around us.”
Barbara’s conversation pieces started with a social issue. She worked intuitively, painting images or ideas she associated with the topic. The painting could be topped with letters, figurines, playing cards or advertisements to bolster its point. From poverty and music to gender roles and marriage, the pieces ask questions and fuel discussion.
“I am interested in discovering something I have never seen before,” Barbara wrote for an artist profile in ARTSPAN. “I flip the board around often while working to keep myself from doing anything too preconceived or realistic. I keep this process going until I find something that interests me and haven’t seen before about humans or animals.”
Barbara’s exhibit, “A life in art,” shows through April 30 at Toby’s Feed Barn, in Point Reyes Station.