Category Archives: An Artist’s Life
Q: Did you formally study art? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
A: My bachelor’s degree in Psychology is from the University of Vermont. I did not formally study art, unless you want to count the several years-worth of drawing and painting classes I took at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA. I never went to art school so do not have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in art.
Much later, in the early 2000s, I was compelled to study photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. This is a rather long story.
On September 11, 2001, my husband Bryan Jack, a high-ranking federal government employee, a brilliant economist and a budget analyst at the Pentagon, was on his way to present his monthly guest lecture in economics at the Naval Postgraduate College in Monterey, CA. He was a passenger on the plane that departed from Dulles Airport and was high-jacked and crashed into the Pentagon.
Losing Bryan on 9/11 was the biggest shock of my life, devastating in every way imaginable. We were soulmates and newly married. I have lived with his loss every single day for more than twenty years now. Life has never been the same.
In the summer of 2002 I was beginning to feel ready to get back to work. Learning about photography and cameras became essential avenues to my well-being.
My first challenge was learning how to use Bryan’s 4 x 5 view camera. Bryan had always taken the 4 x 5 negatives from which I derived the reference photos that were essential tools for making pastel paintings. I enrolled in a one-week view camera workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York. Surprisingly, it was very easy. I had derived substantial technical knowledge just from watching Bryan for many years.
After the view camera workshop, I decided to throw myself into learning this new medium, beginning with Photography I. I spent the next few years taking many classes at ICP and learning as much as I could. Eventually, I learned how to use Bryan’s extensive collection of film cameras, to properly light the setups that served as subject material for my “Domestic Threats” pastel paintings, and to make my own large chromogenic prints in a darkroom.
Then in October 2009 I was invited to present a solo photography exhibition at a gallery in New York. Continuing to make art after Bryan’s death had seemed like such an impossibility. I remember thinking how proud he would have been to know I became a good photographer.
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Pearls from artists* # 633
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.
… as he makes clear repeatedly throughout the text, there can be no such thing as a revolution in art. The “plastic process” as he [Mark Rothko] labels, it – the development of art – is inherently evolutionary. An artist can react against it, but there is no way to be outside it; it is the fabric with which he or she weaves. Technique, ways of seeing, representing, and balancing, are all in a common pool from which the artist draws.
Christopher Rothko in The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko
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Travel photo of the month*
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
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Pearls from artists* # 631
With “Maestro,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 35” x 28.5” framed
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Selling your art is harder than creating it. Every artist dreams of being able to sell his/her art and make a considerable profit from it and/or build a business based on art. This would give artists the opportunity to make art full-time. However, the process is neither easy nor quick. It requires determination, discipline, and consistency. The idea of becoming a successful artist overnight almost doesn’t exist. All the artists who seem to be “overnight successes” put in a lot of hard work for years.
Dr. Bianca Turner in The Business of Art: A Guide for Visual Artists to Become Successful Entrepreneurs
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Q: Are there any artists whose work you particularly admire? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
Henri Matisse: Forms in Freedom at the National Art Center Tokyo
A: Among historical painters, I adore Henri Matisse and André Derain, for their striking compositions and bold use of colors. Among living photographers, I am most fascinated by the Pictures Generation, namely, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Sandy Skoglund, and Gregory Crewdson. I am drawn to these photographers, I think, because my earliest pastel painting series involved staged photography.
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Travel photo of the month*
Autumn in Alexandria, VA
*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
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Pearls from artists* # 627
With friends at the 2024 Whitney Biennial!
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
“People are really open here and very dynamic, and they really respect hard work. So if you are going to shows, if you are part of the community, if you go do studio visits, if you’re interested in other people, you can create a community, said Julie [Curtiss]. “You can’t be a lazy artist in New York.”
Julie Curtiss quoted in Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker
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Q: What inspires you to create? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
A: You remember the expression, to whom much is given, much is expected? Having discovered around the age of 5 or so that I could draw anything I could see, I know I have been given a tremendous gift. I remember being completely surprised as a kid to realize that not everyone can do this.
Therefore, I feel a kind of sacred obligation to develop my abilities as far as possible, to make the most of my short time on this earth. It is a thrill to see not only what is going to happen next in the studio, but also in my life. For example, I have become a world traveler. I wonder, which new country will I visit next?
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Pearls from artists* # 626
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
This is why, when writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than at, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life is filled with predictable uncertainties, but with the awareness that we are always starting over. That everything we will ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know – if we know anything at all – is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job – as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy – of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt – spectacularly, brazenly – into the unknown.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
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Q: What kind of reactions do you get from spectators at your exhibitions? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
Nov 30
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A group exhibition in New Jersey
A: Reactions to my work run the gamut – from dopey comments like, “I’m scared!” to “How in the world is such beauty and profundity possible to achieve using only soft pastel on a piece of sandpaper!”
I’m sure most artists can say the same. We can only hope that our work finds its way to an audience that has the eyes, heart, and mind to understand, to appreciate on a deep level the decades of devotion, sacrifice, and hard work that go into creating works of art.
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Posted in 2024, 2024, An Artist's Life, Exhibitions
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