Category Archives: Art Business
Our 2024 Winter Newsletter!
Laurels for our new documentary, “Barbara Rachko: True Grit”!
For today I have decided to forego my usual post and instead share our 2024 Winter Newsletter! Lots of exciting things have been (and are) happening! Please check out the link.
https://mailchi.mp/d71e7ada17b3/2024winternewsletter
Comments are welcome!
Q: Would you talk about your first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery?
“Big Deal,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
A: Although I had exhibited in a number of non-profit galleries in Virginia, Washington, DC, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, my first solo in a commercial gallery was at 479 Gallery, 520 Broadway, in July 1996. The previous summer I had entered a juried exhibition there. My work won first prize and I was awarded a solo show the following July.
This exhibition was soon followed by representation at an important New York gallery, Brewster Fine Arts, at 41 West 57th Street. I had my first two-person exhibition at Brewster in October 1996. The gallery specialized in art by Latin American artists. Besides myself, the sole non-Latina represented by Brewster was Leonora Carrington! I quickly began exhibiting alongside a group of illustrious artists: Leonora, Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Toledo, Francisco Zuniga, and other Latin American masters. I could hardly believe my good fortune!
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you deal with rejection?
Letter from MoMA to Andy Warhol
A: I take the long view and try to remember that rejection is an occupational hazard that has plagued every artist throughout history. Even one of the most famous – Andy Warhol – had to endure innumerable rejections before his work was finally appreciated. So why should it be any different for my peers and me? Tacked to my refrigerator is a copy of a now classic letter, dated October 18, 1956. It reads:
Dear Mr. Warhol,
Last week our Committee on the Museum Collections held its first meeting of the fall session and had a chance to study your drawing entitled “Shoe,” which you so generously offered as a gift to the Museum.
I regret that I must report to you that the Committee decided, after careful consideration, that they ought not to accept it for our Collections.
Let me explain that because of our severely limited gallery and storage space we must turn down many gifts offered, since we feel it is not fair to accept as a gift a work which may be shown only infrequently.
Nevertheless, the Committee has asked me to pass on to you their thanks for your generous expression in our Collection.
Sincerely,
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
Director of the Museum Collections
P.S. The drawing may be picked up from the Museum at your convenience.
I especially chuckle at the P.S. as, surely, here we have one of the biggest blunders by a museum professional in history!
Comments are welcome!
Q: I saw your book of photos. Very nice. How do you keep track of inventory? I have struggled with that. (Question from Laura Fischer Saxon via Facebook).
Barbara’s portfolio book
A: Every time I finish a pastel painting I order an 8” x 10” c-print at Duggal Visual Solutions. I started doing this in the 1980s when I was a portrait artist and the company that represented me needed photos of my work to show to potential clients. I’ve just continued making 8” x 10”photos all these years in order to document my work!
Pastel is an extremely slow medium so even though I have been working more than 37 years, the two pastel paintings in progress now are numbers 160 and 161. The portfolio book also has early press clippings, reviews from before the internet (when everything was on paper), and a few photos of early solo exhibitions in the 1990s.
BTW what a great question! No one has ever asked me this before!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 566
With “Sacrificial” (left), 70” x 50” framed and “Disruptor,” 35” x 28.5” framed; both are soft pastel on sandpaper
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Money, fame. It was funny, it was confusing. It was the end. The purity was gone. “I vividly experienced the change of climate with the financial boom in the art world,” Mercedes [Matter] said. “The change from taking poverty and obscurity for granted to competing for a place in the spotlight. At the Cedar [Tavern] one began hearing many talking about galleries over their bourbons instead… [of] about art as before over their beers.” Artists had become entertainers, selling themselves and their gifts for a piece of paper, the almighty dollar, emblazoned with a new motto, “In God We Trust.” Paul Brach said 1957 was the last year that artists made other artists’ reputations. From then on, they were made by a machine called “the art establishment.” “Career, the nemesis of our past, had crept up on all of us,” Larry [Rivers] said. It was like a virus, something all of them had but none of them wanted. At least in the abstract.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 537
*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 often as the artist is criticized, he’s probably more often rejected. If you produce a product for which there is only a limited demand, if you ignore the requirements of the workplace, if you’re unlucky and unconnected, if you do work that is objectively inferior to the work of other artists in your territory, if you venture into new territory, if your message isn’t a bland one, then you’re more likely to experience rejection. The producer Don Simpson described life as a production executive at Paramount: ”You’re tired all the time, and you’re never in a great mood because you have to say no to 200 people a week. Ninety percent of your judgments are no. You offend people, you hurt people, you may damage people.”
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
Comments are welcome!
Q: To what extent will the world of art change in the post-COVID period – both in terms of what is created and also the business of art? (Question from artamour)
A: We all still wonder how the art world will change post-COVID. (Will there ever be a time when we can say we are post-COVID?). I know that I will continue refining and developing my art practice and seeking out new business opportunities. I have been an artist long enough to know that I will always follow my own path (each pastel painting points to the next one) regardless of what is going on in the larger world. How could I not do so? In large part due to an extensive social media program carried out by my two able assistants, the COVID period has been a personal boon. I completed a short documentary film about my life and work. It is in post-production now. I gained representation with three new international galleries. My blog is attracting approximately 1,000 – 2,000 new subscribers every month and I continue receiving requests for interviews from around the world.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What are your current aspirations?
A: During the pandemic I was fortunate to have added three international galleries – in London, New Delhi, and Sweden – to the growing list of galleries that represent my work. (This is in addition to a gallery in Naples, FL that I have been working with for several years). It is extremely gratifying to discover that finally, after 36 years as a devoted and hard-working professional artist, galleries are seeking me out, instead of the other way around. Next I’d like to find a local home gallery in New York with whom to work. This will be the final piece of my business plan… at least for now!
Comments are welcome!
Q: What was the first review you ever received and how did you get it?
A: In 1991 I was in my late thirties and had resigned my active duty Naval commission two years before. I had been an artist for five years. I was anxious to get my pastel paintings exhibited, seen by an audience, and collected! As I worked hard to build my resume, I hustled to exhibit in all sorts of spaces that were not galleries: restaurants, hospitals, real estate offices, law offices, theaters, doctors’ offices, and more. The goal was to just get the work out of my home studio.
In December 1991 I presented a solo exhibition at Dumbarton Church in Georgetown (Washington, DC). For years Bryan had volunteered to set up chairs, a Steinway piano, and other miscellaneous equipment for their classical music concert series. The church’s downstairs space was used to showcase artists’ work. So I applied for a solo exhibition, was accepted, and got my first review in a local Washington, DC newspaper called “Eye Wash!”
Moral: artists have to work extremely hard for every little thing that comes our way!
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 
Q: Would you share some of your favorite comments that fans and supporters have made about your work?
Mar 25
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: I have published favorite quotes on the website, but for anyone who has not read them, please see the above photo or https://barbararachko.art/en/
Comments are welcome!
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