[3] In 2015, MASS MoCA commissioned Barbara Prey to create the world's largest known watercolor painting[4] (8 by 15 feet) for its new Building 6, which opened in Spring 2017.

"[8] After an internship at The Metropolitan Museum in New York City, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, enabling her to spend two years in southern Germany where she studied, worked and exhibited extensively.

[7] A grant from The Henry Luce Foundation from 1986 to 1987 to Tainan, Taiwan, where she was a visiting professor in Western art, enabled her to continue to study with several Chinese master painters.

[10] She began selling her work to family and friends, then made sales through private exhibitions and social gatherings, eventually retaining representation with numerous galleries.

Heckscher Museum Director Michael Schantz stated, "Barbara is one of America's most gifted watercolorists whose works are rooted in the grand traditions of American landscape painting.

[21] Chairman Dana Gioia stated to ARTFORUM "Barbara Prey's nomination continues our tradition of having prominent visual artists as members of the National Council of the Arts.

"[6] She has expressed an interest in the use of strong color, especially applied to her study of Maine landscapes; "A clear blue sky speaks to your soul — it's like a piece of music.

"[28] Referring to her White House Christmas card in 2003, an article in The New Yorker stated that "Barbara Prey, may be, at this moment, the most widely viewed painter in the world.

"[29] David Mitten, curator of the Harvard Art Museums, described Prey's paintings as, "Partaking of the universal values of light and color, while creating coherent evocative spaces of great beauty and enduring significance.

"[31][32] Sarah Cash of the National Gallery of Art has said that Prey's works "connects us, as viewers, to the land (and the sea); these scenes link us to place, history, and elemental human pursuits in the face of our frenetic, technology-dominated lives.