[1] From 1962 to 1966 she trained as a commercial artist and also regularly attended the International Summer Academy for graphic arts in Salzburg, where she took courses in watercolor and where her teachers included Oskar Kokoschka.
[3] From 1990 her works started to dissolve the barriers between painting, art objects and photographs, exploring the transitional zones between the various mediums.
Her work draws from her early efforts at surface pictural composition by caricature and superimposed structures.
Barbara von Johnson describes herself as the "optical mother of Pumuckl."
She did receive criticism from Pumuckl fans when her attorney, in an effort to protect her copyright claim, requested the Pumuckl image be removed from fan internet sites because they lacked attribution to Barbara von Johnson.