The artist Barbara Jean was raised in Minnesota where she studied Fine Arts at the University of Minnesota.

She followed post-academic studies in Firenze and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She lives and works in Nederland for more than thirty years. She has chosen for the Dutch nationality while retaining her American citizenship.

Her art is, in contrast to her course of life, is not to be captured in terms of designated times or continents. Her art is engaged with ideas and thoughts. She investigates time and boundaries, the first she respects, the latter she oversteps. Her art makes the spiritual visible; it is metaphorical images of the word.

The total is a wandering, a quest for truth and the aesthetic. It is uncertain if as Gilgamesh from the Mesopotamian mythology or the ancient German Gods and heroes if the eternal will ever be found, or as in Dante's Divine Comedy or Christian in John Bunyans the Pilgrims' Progress light will be discovered. The important thing is the search that gives form and content to the work of the artist.

With Barbara Jean this quest, as seen in time and space, goes broad and deep. The deeper she goes, the greater the ease with which the artistic result becomes visible. From this attitude extensive and smaller projects are realized with a profound depth and experimental nature in which interaction between creator, subject, and observer is addressed. An area where thesis and antithesis form synthesis. The artist as creator and destroyer aspiring to show a sublime ordering for the here and now.

Dr.B.Priddy, cat. solo exhibition ‘2 & 3 Dimensionals’, Museum Abtei Liesborn, Germany