Grad's work is noted for its loose, painterly invented spaces, lush color, and ability to conjure wide-ranging allusions to land and seascapes, urban sprawl, or ecological concerns.O'Brien, Barbara. "The Circumstantial Evidence of Place, Finding Our Way Into (and Out of) a Painting," Video Villa: New Paintings by Barbara Grad, Exhibition essay. Kansas City, MO: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2011.Koslow-Miller, Francine. Barbara Grad: Lost Horizons, Boston: Howard Yezerski Gallery, 2013.Taylor, Robert. "The striking visions of eight area artists," Boston Globe, March 26, 1989. In 2018, critic John Yau wrote that Grad's "patterns and striations evoke watery reflections and geological strata, tilled land and strip mines, without shedding their identity as abstract, painterly marks. […] She evokes a world undergoing myriad changes, from the incremental and unavoidable to the deliberate and cataclysmic." Describing the 2016 Grad show "Off Road," The Boston Globe's Cate McQuaid observed, "Grad paints energy and movement, not things. [Her] stripes, colors, and crashing forms conveying urgency as she places us on the precipice of chaos."
