Category Archives: Inspiration
Pearls from artists* # 710
Shamans performing a ‘safe travels’ ritual for our group at Tiwanaku, 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
Mental health not only exists on a spectrum but it is also often culture-specific. Revered healers and sages in one country are the ‘crazies’ in another. Context determines whether we will be treated for illness, or simply considered ‘eccentric’ and left alone. Many who struggle to hide their differences, go against their own nature, and contort themselves into an acceptable demeanor to fit in, until they break down or die, undiagnosed.
Kate Kretz in Art From your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice”
Q: You’ve been working with the same medium and subject matter for decades. How did that begin, and how has it sustained you for so long? (Question from “Pastel, Passion, and Perseverance: An Interview with Barbara Rachko” in .ART Odyssey: Healing)
A: Back in the early 1990s I began using folk art as my subject matter, and I was incredibly lucky. More than thirty years later, I’m still working with it. As artists, we don’t know at the start whether a subject will sustain us, whether it will keep our curiosity alive. For me it has. I’ve always been fascinated by different cultures around the world, and that continues to feed the work. There’s freedom in that kind of framework.
I chose pastel on sandpaper as my medium. I don’t have to question it anymore. That choice itself has opened space to keep growing.
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Pearls from artists* # 709
Signing “Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
The artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him—on the one hand the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire… There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.
Carl Jung quoted in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Steven Nachmanovitch
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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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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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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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Pearls from artists* # 703
Barbara’s 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.
Artmaking embodies freedom, in a way that few vocations do. But, while we have no supervisors in our studios, we are not quite as free as we imagine. We all carry sone cumulative art baggage. All the people and ideas that have influenced us over the years have shaped the art we make today. Sone guidance served us well, seamlessly dovetailing into our own divine direction. Yet others may hold us back, constraining the distinct development of our creative articulation.
The work we do is affected by logistical limitations, such as time, space, and money. But we also possess biases, assumptions, rules, values, methodologies, goal structures, and conceptual frameworks we have assimilated into our practice along the way. We may delude ourselves into thinking we have actively chosen these limiting parameters, instead of recognizing that we may have absorbed them purely by default. Authority figures, over the course of our entire lives, have provided positive or negative reinforcement, not only through overt criticism or praise, but also through omission. These pressures are frequently tacit, wordlessly shaping the direction of our practice when a piece was changed or ignored by the powers that be.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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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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