Barbara Dobbs paints the light. Her transparent watercolors are an expression of love, blessed before they ever leave the studio with one intention: that everyone who sees them is met with a moment of peace.

Painting felt like it was in her blood. Barbara grew up in rural Norfolk, England, in the country of Constable, Seago and Gainsborough, then spent 35 years as a landscape architect and ecologist, learning season after season how light, color and shape quietly change the way a person feels in a space.

Watercolor re-ignited during her studies as a Doctor of Spiritual Science, when she found herself painting almost without deciding to, and discovered the luminous color only transparent watercolor can carry. Her work moves freely between the stylized and the abstract, and offers the viewer a glimpse of spiritual perception, a stillness they can feel.

That is what she hopes a collector lives with, day after day: far more than decoration, it’s a gentle return to peace.

Her work has been juried into national shows, including the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s exhibition, and shown across Colorado in Steamboat Springs, Lafayette, and downtown Boulder.