ARTIST TO SHOW HER TRUE COLORS AT EXHIBIT IN THOUSAND OAKS : THE FACTS.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

It's been years, but Barbara A. Wood still vividly remembers the day she became an artist - and the unlikely object that brought out the colorist in her.

She was 5 years old and digging in the back yard of her grandparents' Missouri home to make mud pies when the spoon she was using for a shovel struck something hard. A little more digging and out popped the marble - a mesmerizingly bright blue orb that seemed to burn a hole in her consciousness.

``It just affected me so, I loved the colors of the marble,'' said the Thousand Oaks resident.

It was her first awareness of color and for a time her favorite childhood toys were a set of marbles - she became ``an avid marble collector,'' she said - and a magnifying glass she received from her grandparents before trying her hand at art.

``I would just sit for hours and put the marbles under the magnifying glass, I was so intrigued with color,'' she said. ``I was just emulating the marbles with my colors.''

Local residents will get a chance to see Wood's artistic development and her use of color at an exhibit of 101 of her works running Monday through Jan. 15 in the Charles E. Probst Center for the Performing Arts in the Civic Arts Plaza.

The exhibit, sponsored by the Civic Arts Plaza Visual Arts Committee, gets its official kickoff Monday at a wine and cheese reception. The reception, running from 4 to 9 p.m., will be open to the public.

Her works will fill all three floors at the Probst center - something she finds mind-boggling.

``I think this is the largest body of work I have exhibited at one time,'' said Wood, who lived in seven states before settling in Thousand Oaks about 20 years ago. ``I feel so good about it, because it's here - I know it sounds corny, but it's my hometown and it's very important to me.

``I feel very honored that the Civic Arts Plaza has chosen me to have an exhibit there,'' she added. ``They say I'm the first woman who has ever filled three floors - that's very exciting.''

Starting out with water colors, pastels, pencil and ink, and charcoal, Wood later turned to oils because it was a much more challenging medium.

``It was challenging to me because I know you can overwork an oil and it can become very messy,'' Wood said. ``I try to keep that freshness in my oils - you have to know when to quit.''

Though she's done the occasional still life and landscape, her favorite subject is people, perhaps because she spent much of her early life isolated by illness, and perhaps because her parents divorced when she was 18 months old.

``I was an only child and I never knew my real father and I was asthmatic: I spent a great deal of my life secluded,'' she said. ``It always seemed I was on the inside looking out and I was drawing my imaginary people on my drawing pad.''

She has been labeled variously an impressionist, romanticist, colorist or expressionist and numbers among her influences Pierre Auguste Renoir, Vasily Kandinsky, Pierre Bonnard - artists whose works range from impressionism to abstractionism - and some of the expressionists.

And though Wood considers herself an expressionist, her work is not in the grim manner of, say, Edvard Munch, though she concedes the Norwegian expressionist may have influenced her use of color.

In fact, she avoids grim subjects and focuses her artistic vision on uplifting subjects, because there is already so much unhappiness in the world. Indeed, she's experienced her share of unhappiness.

``I just feel my art is upbeat and I feel that's what we need to express,'' she said. ``A lot of artists express the morbid and depraved - if I want that I'll turn on the six o'clock news.''

Wood's works are included in the collections of President and Nancy Reagan; show biz luminaries Mickey Rooney, Ron Howard, Jerry Lewis, Jane Seymour and Dick Van Dyke; Playboy's Hugh Hefner; Ventura County Superior Court Judge Colleen Toy White; and Gen. Omar Bradley.

She hopes her work helps viewers see the world around them in a different light.

``We do need to learn to see, because we go through life sometimes with tunnel vision,'' she said. ``There's something for everybody in art.''

So whatever happened to that bright blue marble that started it all? Years ago one of her sons got into her marble collection.

``That was a sad day: That was one of the marbles that attracted my son,'' she said. ``It just disappeared and I've been looking for it ever since.''

WHAT: ``A Retrospective Viewing,'' presenting an exhibition of limited edition serigraphs and original oil paintings by Barbara A. Wood.

WHEN: Nov. 11 through Jan. 15.

WHERE: Charles E. Probst Center for the Performing Arts in the Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd.

SPONSOR: The Civic Arts Plaza Visual Arts Committee.

OTHER DETAILS: The exhibit will kick off with a wine and cheese reception Monday from 4 to 9 p.m. in the Probst Center. The reception is open to the public.

INFORMATION: For guided tours and other information, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: (Color only in Conejo edition) Artwork by Barbara A. Wood will be displayed on three floors of the Charles E. Probst Center beginning Monday through Jan. 15.

Andy Holzman/Special to the Daily News