From Wall Street to watercolors: Barbara Schwan makes a splash

Barbara Schwan started painting at age 62 in New Jersey.

These days, at 70, she's a top-selling artist at Driftwood Beach Home & Garden in Whitney Plaza and recently met the owner of five of her works. 

Jill Benkelman purchased a condo on Longboat Key a year and a half ago, rehabbed the entire unit and is now decorating it, gravitating toward Schwan's brand of watercolor art. 

“I never thought I would be a collector of art, but now I say I am,” she said. “Each one is just so dear to me. I love them.”

Schwan's pieces range from $30 to $500 depending on the size, though she's been advised to price them higher.

“The purpose of doing this for me is that I feel really amazed and wonderful about the fact that someone wants to hang something that I painted in their home,” Schwan said. “I know how particular I am with my home, so when someone picks something out that they love like Jill just did, it makes me feel so good. I get as much out of it as anybody.” 

Benkelman is not the only Schwan collector on Longboat Key. She’s sold more than 125 “Schwans” in a little over a year. 

The lanai off Schwan’s second-floor condo has become an art studio. It has good light, and her husband puts up with the mess. She’s out there daily, sometimes for 15 minutes, other times she gets lost for hours in a painting. It’s an enjoyable and still profitable hobby. 

“I’m not giving them away. It enables me to buy more supplies,” Schwan said. “I don’t feel guilty about going to the store and buying a special brush or a paint or something.” 

Schwan and her husband, Ron, spent two seasons snowbirding from New Jersey. Last October was supposed to be their third, but Schwan was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she became a patient at the Moffitt Cancer Center, the couple decided to make the move permanent.    

They met decades before on Wall Street, working in customer service for PaineWebber. Schwan trained Ron; after that, they started dating. August marked their 40th anniversary. 

“He’s my rock,” Schwan said. “He’s the one that drives me back and forth to Moffitt and takes care of me when I feel crappy.”

Ron is a golfer, not a painter and the realist to her artist, who says things like, "I've never seen a bird with that color.” But Schwan says if Ron is critical, it makes her rethink the piece and he’s often right. 

“He’s very supportive,” she said. “He’s loving the fact that I’m getting so much out of this.”   

The couple’s last home in Barnegat, New Jersey was in an adult community. They offered a watercolor class, and Schwan fell in love. The instructor Nancy Edwards saw talent in her, so they continued on with private lessons. Edwards still checks in with her eight years after her first lesson to see what she’s working on.  

Beyond painting, Schwan is a beach lover and takes long walks collecting shells, but doesn’t scour for the most perfect and beautiful specimens. She takes the shells that have been stepped on or washed up in pieces and gives them new life as mirrors and candle holders. 

Schwan paints cards and creates holiday decor. She’ll take a conch shell and turn it into a pendant for a necklace. It’s as if her artistic talent lay dormant for so many years, it can no longer be contained.