Barbara Ernst Prey’s career is thirty-five years young; her lifelong learning continues unabated. “We look and we learn and we incorporate and then we put our own mark, world view, and experience in to the work,” muses Prey. The artist continues to take the watercolor medium, which has an august role in the history of American art, to innovative—yet traditionally rooted—places. Looking as well as seeing, she searches out new vistas, compositions, and ideas in the landscapes and environments that are her home. Essay by Sarah Cash, Curator, National Gallery of Art