Pearls from artists* # 708
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Free play must be tempered with judgment, and judgment tempered with freedom to play. We perform innumerable balancing acts, dances between opposite poles, each of which is necessary for life and art to exist. We have to live right on the balance point of an equi-valence between free flow of impulse and constant testing and questing for quality. With too little judgment, we get trash. We too much judgment, we get blockage. In order to play freely, we must have a command of technique. Back and forth flows the dialogue of imagination and discipline, passion and precision. We harmonize groundedness in daily practice with spiritedness in daily stepping out into the unknown.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Charcoal drawing
A: This preliminary charcoal drawing is my first tentative move towards the next “Bolivianos” pastel painting. I took the reference photo in February during my Bolivia trip to research and experience Carnival in Oruro.
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Pearls from artists* # 707
The Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Intuition often serves as a diving rod that guides us to our secret language. ‘Listening to your gut’ is actually a rapid process of previous experience and cumulative knowledge that results in a seemingly sudden ‘educated guess.’ You may not be able to consciously access all the memories and information that led to your ‘hunch,’ but they are there, nevertheless. Many of us have a keenly developed sense of intuition, but do not trust it. But often, when we are deliberating a problem, we lay our head on our pillow, all the rational ‘pros and cons’ drop away, and we know the answer to our question. We simply need to cultivate and have faith in that knowing.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Travel photo of the month*
*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
Moonrise, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
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Q: What’s a belief or project you are committed to, no matter how long it takes? (Question from Bold Journey)
Some of my soft pastels (Girault and Sennelier)
A: For centuries, pastel was dismissed as a “second-class” medium, used mainly for sketches. My mission for the past four decades has been to prove otherwise.
Pastel is pure pigment—rich, permanent, and luminous. Great artists such as Degas, Cassatt, and Renoir used pastel for finished works, not just studies. Today, I remain dedicated to showing what pastel can achieve as a major fine art medium.
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Pearls from artists* # 705
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
There are infinitely many ways to structure art and as many ways to construe it once it exists. One mark of a great poem, novel, symphony, or painting is that innumerable interpretations are generated—different people see it differently from one time to another. The hundredth time I taste an artwork I love, I still find something new in it, because I am different, and because there is some largeness or manyness in the art that can resonate with the changing versions of myself.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Q: What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them? (Question from Bold Journey)
A: The deepest wound was losing Bryan on 9/11. I resolved not to become another victim of that tragedy and chose to continue living and making art.
Because I depend on reference photographs for my work, my first hurdle was learning to use Bryan’s 4×5 view camera. He had always taken the photos for me. In 2002, I enrolled in a photography workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York. To my surprise, I had absorbed a lot just from watching him, and I went on to formally study photography for several years. In 2009, I was invited to present a solo photography exhibition in New York.
By 2003, I resumed my Domestic Threats series. The first large pastel I completed from one of my own photographs was titled She Embraced It and Grew Stronger. It was autobiographical: “she” was me, and “it” was life without Bryan.
That series ended in 2007, by which time I was finding more peace. But then I faced a new challenge: creative block. For months I struggled, but I kept showing up daily. Eventually, a breakthrough came, and I began the Black Paintings series. The dark backgrounds represented the place I had emerged from; the vibrant figures symbolized resilience and life.
In 2017, inspired by a museum exhibition in La Paz, I began Bolivianos, based on Carnival masks. Many view this as my boldest and most exciting work yet.
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Pearls from artists* # 704
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Why do we do art? There may be multiple and serious motivations, such as opening people’s eyes to injustice or saving the world; but if the activity to save the world doesn’t give us joy, what’s the point of having a world, and how will we have the wholeness and energy to carry on? This whole adventure of creativity is about joy and love. We live for the pure joy of being, and out of that joy unfold the ten thousand art forms and all the branches of learning and compassionate activity.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Art and Life
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Travel photo of the month*
*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
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barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 
Pearls from artists* # 706
Jun 10
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
Carnival mask, MUSEF La Paz, Bolivia
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Several observers have commented that Saint Michael seems “pallid and emasculated” compared to the fearsome devils that oppose him. During the dancing that filled the parade ground immediately before and after the play’s performance, Michael was visually outshone and vastly outnumbered. While a few archangels danced up and down in pink and white, hundreds of devils cavorted in a wild array of colors splashed liberally across their high boots, skintight trousers, beaded capes and tunics, long wigs, and monstrous masks. Their masks are among the most complex headpieces in the festive world: “bulging, billiard-ball eyes studded with bright artificial stones and huge grinning silver teeth, hideously pointed, leer grotesquely out of an exuberant triangle of horns and ears and tusks, painted in a wild cacophony of colors, and crowned by a three-headed viper or other misshapen reptile.” Some masks are crowned with whole stuffed condors. No two masks are alike. Dancing alongside the devils, a number of China Supays provocatively swing their hips and twirled their skirts. The odds were stacked against the virtuous archangel. The audience’s eyes were on the devil’s masks and the China Supay’s thighs. Winning the aesthetic war in performance is a common folk means of challenging an officially scripted defeat.
Max Harris in Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance
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