Barbara Helen Berger provides for those around her a quiet yet dynamic model of the artist’s life, dedicated to exploration and reflection. And when the time is right and the work is ripe, she shares her creations with the community. In 1984, after years of exhibiting her paintings in fine art shows, she fulfilled her childhood dream to create works in which words and pictures would come together.
Since that time she has produced award-winning children’s picture books, prose meditations, and three-dimensional sculptures. What she creates grows out of who she is and how she views the world. Each of the ten children’s books for which she is best known, illustrates issues she holds most dear: friendship, compassion, creativity, transformation, the spirit. Her stories are as richly layered as her paintings. They fulfill all the elements of good children’s literature, and simultaneously transcend them, thus nourishing both child and adult reader. Because of the masterful balance she is able to maintain between image and word, adventure and message, her work equally serves eye and ear, mind and heart. She is the Bodhisattva in whose art we can take refuge, receiving delight and enlightenment in equal measure.