Immediately following her studies, she embarked on the path as a freelance artist and focused on woven works. She still devotes herself to these woven pictures, room and floor elements today, emphasizing that the development of complexity has naturally taken its course over the past 30 years. She has been working together with her partner Wolfgang Horn since 1994 and describes this activity as "congenial": "We have placed the textile at the center of our art. In addition to weaving, it is the fields of object, photography, installation and animation that we play on." The works of the two have since been represented in more than 180 exhibitions at home and abroad. Düsseldorf with the large-scale installation "6 Carpets" in the Ehrenhof in 1999, Cologne, Bielefeld and Nordhorn as well as internationally Paris, Como and Montreal are only a small selection of the places where their works have been shown in solo or group exhibitions. But her works can also be found at the two locations of the university, e.g. in the Krefeld Textile Museum with the exhibition "Craftstoff" or through the woven room element "Platine" in the Städtische Museum Schloss Rheydt in Mönchengladbach. In 2007 she was awarded the State Prize for Arts and Crafts in North Rhine-Westphalia in the field of textiles/leather.

When Barbara Esser looks back on her student days, she associates them with self-determined work. Especially after her preliminary studies, she enjoyed the freedom that the studies offered. What she took with her from her studies for her artistic path was working in the workshops of the university's weaving mill, and that is exactly where she would be drawn to again if she had the choice. Barbara Esser is currently represented with light and tree installations in Krefeld and Düsseldorf (www.esserhorn.de).