Category Archives: Photography
Q: You are a multi-talented woman! Tell us about your book, “From Pilot to Painter,” and how writing, for you, compares to painting and photography. Which do you prefer?
“From Pilot to Painter”
A: I am pleased that my eBook FROM PILOT TO PAINTER is available on Amazon and iTunes. It is based on my blog and is part memoir, including my personal loss on 9/11, insights into my creative practice, and intimate reflections on what it’s like to be an artist living in New York City now. The eBook includes new material not found on the blog, plus 25+ reproductions of my vibrant pastel-on-sandpaper paintings, a Foreword by Ann Landi (who writes for ARTnews and The Wall Street Journal), and more.
“Barbara Rachko’s Colored Dust” (the title of my blog) continues to be a crucial part of my overall art practice. Blogging twice a week forces me to think deeply about my work and to explain it clearly to others. The process has helped me develop a better understanding about why I make art and has encouraged me to become a better writer.
From the beginning in the 1980s I used photographs as reference material and Bryan would shoot 4” x 5” negatives of my elaborate setups with his Toyo-Omega view camera. In those days I rarely picked up a camera except when we were traveling. After Bryan was killed on 9/11, I inherited his extensive camera collection – old Nikons, Leicas, Graphlex cameras, etc. – and I wanted to learn how to use them. In 2002 I enrolled in a series of photography courses (about 10 over 4 years) at the International Center of Photography in New York. I learned how to use all of Bryan’s cameras and how to make my own big color prints in the darkroom. Along the way I discovered that the sense of composition, form, and color I developed over many years as a painter translated well into photography. The camera was just another medium with which to express my ideas. Astonishingly, in 2009 I had my first solo photography exhibition in New York.
It’s wonderful to be both a painter and a photographer. Pastel painting will always be my first love, but photography lets me explore ideas much faster than I ever could as a painter. Paintings take months of work. To me, photographs – from the initial impulse to hanging a framed print on the wall – are instant gratification.
For two years I have been using my iPad Pro to capture thousands of travel photographs. Most recently, I visited Gujarat and Rajasthan in India. I have never been inclined to use a sketchbook so composing photos on my iPad keeps my eye sharp while I’m halfway around the world, far from my studio practice.
Comments are welcome!
Travel photo of the month*
Victoria Station, Mumbai, India, targeted in the November 26, 2008 terrorist attack.
*Favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog.
Comments are welcome!
Travel photo of the month*
Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India
*Favorite travel photographs that have not yet appeared in this blog
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m at the beginning on a small (26” x 20”) pastel painting. The subject is a jaguar mask I photographed in La Paz. This is painting number eleven in the “Bolivianos” series. Lots of green colored dust now!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 365
Ahmedabad, India
* 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 important thing is the intersection between intuition and discipline, because you have to be alert and at the same time invisible. The eye has to be alert and capture very quickly everything you have inside you – I don’t know how to explain it. What the eye sees is the synthesis of what you are or what you’ve learned to do, this is the language of photography…
Graciela Iturbide in Eyes to Fly With: Portraits, Self-Portraits, and Other Photographs
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My blog turns 7 years old on July 15! Here is the very first post from July 15, 2012. Q: What does it take to be an artist, especially one living and working in New York?
Barbara’s Studio with works in progress.
A: The three Big P’s – Patience, Persistence, and Passion. Without all three you will not have the stamina to work tirelessly for very little external reward. You can expect help from no one.
There are so many obstacles to art-making and countless reasons to just give up. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that great art gets made at all. So why do we do it? Above all it’s about making our time on earth matter, about devotion to our innate gifts and love of our hard-fought creative process.
And, my God, it even gets harder as we get older! So what do we do? We dig in that much deeper. It’s a most noble and sacred calling – you know when you have it – and that’s what separates those of us who are in it for the long haul from the wimps, fakers, and hangers-on. I say to my fellow artists who continue to work despite the endless challenges, we are all true heroes!
__________
Lucky me to still be in the same studio! However, when you visit now, you see more tables full of pastels, more postcards on the walls, newer pastel paintings, etc. What I wrote seven years ago still rings true.
Most importantly, THANK YOU to my 42,000+ subscribers for taking this journey with me!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 359
Matador mask, 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.
The Matador, with a black mask made of plaster and stucco, jumps around and teases the pair of bulls. He wears an embroidered cloth on his chest that is draped over his shoulder to cover part of his back. In his hand he carries a saber that was cut out of a barrel or a tin oil can, the way I saw my father and my grandfather make. It has little bells made of beer and other bottle caps, that are flattened into rattles. The matador also wears a colorful diamond shaped montera (cap).
“An Aymara Vision of the Altiplano Masks,” texts and photos by Sixto Choque in Masks of the Bolivian Andes, Editorial Quipos and Banco Mercantil
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Travel photo of the month*
Amber Fort, Jaipur, India
*Favorite travel photographs that have not yet appeared in this blog
Comments are welcome!
Travel photo of the month*
Riding a camel in India’s Thar Desert
*Favorite travel photographs that have not yet appeared in this blog
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 350
Ahmedabad, India
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Seeing is not a passive awareness of visual data, but an active focusing upon it, “touching” it. Arnheim writes, in language that echoes the Hindu notion of seeing and touching: “In looking at an object we reach out for it. With an invisible finger we move through the space around us, go out to the distant places where things are found, touch them, catch them, scan their surfaces, trace their borders, explore their texture. It is an eminently active occupation.”
Diana L. Eck in Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India
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