Category Archives: Art Works in Progress

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: “The Moralist,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26”x 20,” awaits finishing touches.

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I continue adding details to “Wise One,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38.”

Comments are welcome!

Q: What is your best advice for new artists?

Recent pastel paintings in progress


A: I would say to remember that artists work from our hearts. Well-meaning people will give you unsolicited, contradictory, and confusing advice about what to paint, how to paint, etc. Artists must learn to ignore most of it and listen to our hearts. Continue working from a place deep inside you and you will always stay on the right track.

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Just about finished!

A: I am putting finishing touches on “Shadow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.”

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I am planning my next pastel painting and the photo above shows a preliminary charcoal sketch for it. I’m continuing to study the effects of scaling my work up or down. This piece will be a smaller, 26” x 20,” version of “The Orator,” 38” x 58” (image), 50” x 70” (framed), from 2017.

Comments are welcome!

Start/Finish of “Disruptor,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20” image, 35” x 28.5” framed

Start

Finish

Comments are welcome!

Start/Finish of “Sacrificial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”

Start
Finish

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I recently began a 26” x 20” pastel painting tentatively titled, “Shadow.”

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A. I continue refining and adding more details to “Disruptor,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.”

Comments are welcome!

Q: There are so many instances in the art world where paintings are discovered to be fakes. Do you think this is a potential problem where your work is concerned? Can your pastel paintings be forged?

Start
Start of “Acolytes,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
Finish
“Acolytes” finished

A: For the record, a little-appreciated fact about my pastel-on-sandpaper paintings is that they can never be forged. To detect a fake, you would only need to x-ray them. If dozens of layers of revisions are not visible under the final pastel painting, you are not looking at an original Rachko, period.

My completed paintings are the results of thousands of decisions. They are the product of an extremely meticulous, labor-intensive, and self-invented process. This is the difference between spending months thinking about and creating a painting, as I do, or a single day. It’s highly doubtful that my rigorous creative process can EVER be duplicated.

Comments are welcome!

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