It has been said that Barry Geller was born with a pencil in his left hand. We can't be sure of that, but we do know that when he started school at age six and a half his mother told him he had to learn to write with his right hand. He agreed on the condition that he could continue to draw with his left hand, and an artist was born.

His professional career began as a story-board artist for an animation studio in West Los Angeles after two years of study at UCLA, a Bachelors degree from San Jose State, and two years of post graduate work at the Los Angeles Art Center. He moved his family to New York in 1957, where he got his first job as an illustrator at the top art studio in the city. His freelance career began quickly with his first commission being the front cover for Fortune Magazine. Other clients included Playboy, Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, Parents Magazine, Cavalier, The New Leader, Seventeen, Simon and Shuster Publishing, and regular contributions to the Sunday edition of the New York Herald Tribune. His advertising illustrations were commissioned by most of the top agencies in the city, and appeared in all the local newspapers and many national magazines. He was recognized by and won awards from the New York Art Directors Club and the Society of Illustrators where he won several awards and was published in their annuals.

At the same time he was doing the free lance work, he painted in between jobs, and in 1964 his work appeared in the American Express Pavilion of the New York Worlds Fair. A painting of Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the window of the Dallas Book Depository caused so much controversy that a two inch thick plastic panel had to be hung in front of it to protect it from vandalism. Since retiring from illustration in 1999, he now is painting full time, and exhibiting with the Grey McGear Gallery in Santa Monica, California.