Barbara Barkley has been making paper for over twenty years, using Western and Eastern traditional styles of papermaking in her artwork.

"It is the feeling of antiquity and textural richness that so intrigues me when I approch my Western style papermaking. There is an alchemical fell to preparing plant fibers and pigmenting cotton rag, flax, hemp, linen and sisal fibers before I begin to create my art. Each lends it's own chracter to the sheet. Additional material may be added to numerous layers of colored fiber to further enliven the surface. I can hardly wait to begin mixing the various colored pulps and seeing the subtle changes in the resulting sheets as I form my artwork. All color and form in my artwork comes from layering my many colored fibers.
I was originally taught by Japanese papermakers in the ancient process of making paper from plants. I gather long strong fibered plants, which I cook in lye for several hours, hand beat and form into sheets or these fibers are mixed into my pigmented pulps."