Barbara Takenaga is known for her highly detailed, abstract, luminous paintings that appear to flow and radiate, infinitely in space. Comprised of seemingly, endless and echoing shapes, her compositions provide a sense of wonder alluding to the cosmos and the cellular, to the sublime and the concrete. Her work centers around the idea of how meaning is constructed encouraging the viewer to arrive at multiple interpretations and possibilities depicted in an image.

Both referential and abstract, Cascade (caeruleus) has an intentional amount of ambiguity and openness in meaning.

With its jewel-like glass tesserae set in cascading patterns, the mosaic mural may be seen as Takenaga explains, "as molecular structures, northern lights, folded fabric, falling water, meteor showers, beaded curtains, and more. In a building dedicated to science and medicine, this range of readings, from the microscopic to the cosmic is relevant - that large information can be carried in both the small and large scale, like Mandelbrot fractals."