Barbara Carrasco holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master’s of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. She has been a muralist and artist in various media since her childhood.

Carrasco was born in 1955 in El Paso, Texas, but her family moved to the housing projects for veterans in Culver City (near Los Angeles) within a year of her birth. Her mom was a driving force in creativity and intellectualism through art and literature. This came as a rejection of her mother’s childhood – her mother never felt anchored, which is why reading was so important to her – and that importance was instilled as a value in her children. Sister Mary Anne, Carrasco’s fourth grade teacher, was also formative as far as supporting Carrasco holistically in addition to her passion for art. Carrasco remembers Sister Mary Anne giving the Carrasco family milk in summer school, which was especially influential because Carrasco recalls being poor from a young age. Her father passed away when Carrasco was 12 years old. She was the one to witness his death and had to call 911 to get emergency medical care. This made her feel accountable for carrying on his legacy and wishes. She became interested in college thanks to her father and the Upward Bound program at UCLA (Upward Bound provided college preparatory classes over the summer for her and her sister). The instructors and counselors in the program had a profound effect on her.

In high school, Carrasco was not active in M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán). She instead focused on art and journalism. She was an editor of The Oarsman, the Venice High School newspaper, and then become the first female editor of La Gente, the Chicano newspaper at UCLA. While Carrasco was admitted into UCLA, she did not get into the art school. She went to the Dean of the Art School with the dismal numbers on their diversity, arguing that institutionalized racism was to blame for her rejection. She was subsequently admitted to the program. This experience helped Carrasco realize that the word “no” can be turned around if you’re determined enough. She relates this inherent willingness to lead the fight for justice to the fact that Saint Joan of Arc is her patron saint.

In college, Carrasco supported herself through part-time jobs like portraits and commissions for Universal Studios. She continued to develop a variety of artistic techniques, including ballpoint pen and silverpoint, and eventually, in the 1980s, was commissioned to do her very first mural, The History of Los Angeles: A Mexican Perspective, which turned out to be very controversial. The mural was extremely critical of events in American history, such as Japanese internment, which resulted in only parts of the mural ever being displayed at a single point in time. In 1991, Carrasco received her MFA, but wasn’t inspired enough to continue making art, especially with the death of Cesar Chavez in 1993, for whom she created a funeral banner. In 1993, she married Harry Gamboa, Jr., with whom she had been professionally and personally involved for many years. Her daughter, Barbie, was born in 1994 and Carrasco was diagnosed with lymphoma in the following year. She received a bone marrow transplant in 1996 to treat the disease, but found that her hand was never again steady enough to do detailed work. Carrasco has also been active in other areas, such as academia. Carrasco was a UC regent’s professor in 2002-2003 and was a founding member of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, currently serving on the board.

Carrasco focuses on women in her art, which has always been politically oriented. A recent example of this political orientation is her Dolores Huerta piece on the labor and civil rights activist. All of her art has been subject to censorship, not just her aforementioned controversial mural. More recently, she has participated in art collectives like the Galería de la Raza website. And in 2014, Carrasco was recognized as a Los Angeles “Community Champion.”