Category Archives: Photography
Pearls from artists* # 266
Washington, DC
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… it is easy to describe the natural objects that we can hold in our hands, or move into view, as we would describe works of art: and this conditions the kind of pleasure we take in them. They are objets trouves, jewels, treasures, whose perfection seems to radiate from themselves, as from an inner light. Landscapes by contrast are very far from works of art – they owe their appeal not to symmetry, unity and form, but to an openness, grandeur and world-like expansiveness, in which it is we and not they that are contained.
Roger Scruton in Beauty: A Very Short Introduction
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Q: Would you speak about how important it was to get back to work after losing your husband on 9/11?
“She Embraced It and Grew Stronger,” 2003, the first pastel painting I completed after Bryan was killed
A: On September 11, 2001, my husband Bryan, a high-ranking federal government employee, a brilliant economist (with an IQ of 180 he is still the smartest man I’ve ever met) and a budget analyst at the Pentagon, was en route to Monterrey, CA to give his monthly guest lecture for an economics class at the Naval Postgraduate College. He had the horrible misfortune of flying out of Dulles airport and boarding the plane that was high-jacked and crashed into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. Losing Bryan was the biggest shock of my life and devastating in every possible way.
The following summer I was ready to – I HAD to – get back to work. Learning about photography and pastel painting became avenues to my well-being. I use reference photos for my paintings, so my first challenge was to learn how to use Bryan’s 4 x 5 view camera (Bryan always took these reference photos for me).
In July 2002 I enrolled in a one-week view camera workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York. Much to my surprise, I had already acquired substantial technical knowledge from watching Bryan. Still, after the initial workshop, I threw myself into this new medium and continued studying photography at ICP for several years. I began with Photography I and enrolled in many more classes until I gradually learned how to use Bryan’s extensive camera collection, to properly light my setups, and to print large chromogenic photographs in a darkroom.
In October 2009 it was very gratifying to have my first solo photography exhibition with HP Garcia in New York. (Please see http://barbararachko.art/images/PDFS/BarbaraRachko-HPGargia.pdf). I vividly remember tearing up at the opening as I imagined Bryan looking down at me with his beautiful smile, beaming as he surely would have, so proud of me for having become a respected photographer.
Continuing to make art had seemed an impossibility after Bryan’s death. However, the first large pastel painting that I created using a self-made reference photograph proved my life’s work could continue. The title of that painting, “She Embraced It and Grew Stronger,” is certainly autobiographical. “She” is me, and “it” means continuing on without Bryan and living life for both of us.
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Q: Would you elaborate as to how your recent trip to Bolivia is influencing your work just now?
La Paz, Bolivia
A: I consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen a mask exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore when I visited La Paz in May. Presented as they were against black walls with dramatic spot-lighting, the masks looked exactly like 3D versions of my paintings! These old Bolivian masks were stunning.
I spent a long time there composing photographs on my iPad. Immediately I knew this exhibition was a gift because I now had material to keep me busy in the studio for several years.
I have completed the first pastel painting in my new series, “Bolivianos,” and am far along into the second. I’m looking forward to many more to come!
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Q: What non-art book are you reading now?
Tiwanaku
A: I am reading Kim Mac Quarrie’s, “The Last Days of the Incas.” It’s fascinating to discover the intricacies of the epic conquest of the short-lived Inca empire. The book is actually thrilling to read. Mac Quarrie makes this story come alive.
Last summer I traveled to Peru to investigate the history of the Incas and the civilizations that preceded them. In May of this year I continued my studies with a trip to Bolivia. Both trips are proving to be highly inspirational for my art practice.
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Pearls from artists* # 260
Suffolk County
* 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 best analogy I’ve been able to find for that intense feeling of the creative moment is sailing a round-bottomed boat in strong wind. Normally, the hull stays down in the water, with the frictional drag greatly limiting the speed of the boat. But in high wind, every once in a while the hull lifts out of the water, and the drag goes down to zero. It feels like a great hand has suddenly grabbed hold and flung you across the surface like a skimming stone. It’s called planing.
Alan Lightman in A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit
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Q: Would you comment on the origin of the title for your photographic series, “Gods and Monsters”?
Untitled c-print, 24″ x 24″ edition of 5
A: My title is borrowed directly from a 2001 catalogue essay by the late art critic, Gerritt Henry. The essay was about my first pastel painting series (“Domestic Threats”) and it’s called, “Barbara Rachko: Gods and Monsters.”
Among other shared interests, Gerritt and I both loved old Frankenstein movies from the 1940s. Around 1998 interest in James Whale, who had directed the original films, was riding high thanks to an Oscar-winning biopic about his last days in Hollywood. The film was called, “Gods and Monsters.” The title was taken from a line in “Bride of Frankenstein,” in which Dr. Pretorius toasts Dr. Frankenstein saying, “To a new world of gods and monsters.”
My photographic series came after “Domestic Threats” and some years after Gerritt’s essay was published. When I was searching for a title for the photos, “Gods and Monsters” seemed a perfect fit!
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Q: What would you say is your underlying motivation as a contemporary artist?
Museum of Ethnography and Folklore, La Paz, Bolivia
A: What motivates me is the desire to make great art, to develop my innate talents to their fullest, to share the hard-won knowledge I have gained along the way, and to bring as much beauty into this life as possible. It’s never been easy, but I’m trying to spend my short time on this earth as an artist, doing the work I was always meant to do!
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Q: How has your use of photography changed over the years?
Untitled, 24″ x 24″ c-print
A: When my husband, Bryan, was alive I barely picked up a camera, except to photograph sights encountered during our travels.
Throughout the 1990s and ending in 2007, I worked on my series of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings called, “Domestic Threats.” These were realistic depictions of elaborate scenes that I staged first in our 1932 Sears house in Alexandria, Virginia, next in a New York sixth floor walk-up apartment, and finally in my current New York apartment.
I use Mexican masks, carved wooden animals, and other folk art figures that I discovered on trips to Mexico. I staged and lit these setups, while Bryan photographed them using his Toyo-Omega 4 x 5 view camera. We had been collaborating this way almost from the beginning (circa 1991). Having been introduced to photography by his father at the age of 6, Bryan was a terrific amateur photographer.
Bryan would shoot two pieces of 4 x 5 film at different exposures and I would select one, generally the one that showed the most detail in the shadows, to make into a 20 x 24 photograph. The photograph would be my starting point for making the pastel painting. Although I work from life, too, I could not make a painting without mostly looking at a reference photo.
After Bryan was killed on 9/11, I had no choice but to study photography. I completed a series of photography classes at the International Center of Photography in New York, turned myself into a skilled photographer, and presented my first solo photography exhibition at HP Garcia in New York in 2009.
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Start/Finish of “Incognito,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″ image, 50″ x 70″ framed
C-print and preliminary charcoal sketch
Finished
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Pearls from artists* # 213
Matisse Book Cover
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I am astonished by the accuracy with which Matisse remembers the most trifling facts; he describes a room that he went into forty years ago and gives you the measurements, where every piece of furniture stood, how the light fell. He is a man of astounding precision and has little time for anything that he has not confirmed for himself. In art matters, he is not the sort to go looking for a profile fortuitously created by cracks in the wall. Elie Faure writes that Matisse is perhaps the only one of his contemporaries (in particular Marquet and Bonnard) to know exactly where he comes from and the only one who never allows it to show “because his inveterate, invincible, vigilant willpower is always focused on being himself and nothing but.”
Matisse neglects nothing. He seems to know as much about the art market as about painting.
So many stratagems to sell a painting, from intimidating the purchaser to seeming to avoid him: Vollard used them all and used them successfully. Not least the lies that he told to reassure the client. “It works like this,” says Matisse: “To make a sale, you invent lies that have somehow disappeared into thin air by the time the deal is done.”
We talk of the difficulties faced by dealers hoping to gain access to Renoir in his Cagnes residence. Renoir didn’t like having people talk to him about selling his work,” says Matisse: “It bored him. About the only one who got a foot in the door was Paul Guillaume; he dressed up as a young worker with a floppy necktie: “You see, I’m a local. I’ve always loved your painting. I’ve just inherited a little money; I’d like to buy something.”
Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut, translated by Chris Miller
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