Category Archives: Studio
Q: What makes you lose track of time — and find yourself again? (Question from Bold Journey)
A: When I’m having a productive day in the studio, I’m fully present and absorbed. Working in soft pastel on sandpaper, I become immersed in solving technical problems and improving the painting on my easel. Hours pass unnoticed, and I often need to remind myself to stop for lunch. Nothing exists except the work and my relationship with it. Most artists know this feeling of flow—a state of being that’s both natural and essential to creative work.
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Q: Many artists can’t bear to face “a blank canvas.” How do you feel about starting a new piece?
A: That’s an interesting question because I happen to be reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and this morning I saw this:
You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the school of architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
I’ve never understood this fear of “the blank canvas” because I am always excited about beginning a new painting. When you think about it, every professional artist can say, “In the history of the planet no one has ever made what I am about to make!” Once again I am looking at something new on my easel, even if it is only a blank 40” x 60” piece of sandpaper clipped to a slightly larger piece of foam core. Unlike artists who are paralyzed before “a blank canvas,” I am energized by the imagined possibilities of all that empty space! I spend up to three months on a painting so this experience of looking at a blank piece of paper on my easel happens four or five times a year at most. Excluding travel to remote places, which is essential to my work and endlessly fascinating, the first day I get to spend blocking in a new painting is the most exhilarating part of my whole creative process. This is art-making at its freest! I select the pastel colors quickly, without thinking about them, first imagining them, then feeling, looking, and reacting intuitively to what I’ve done, always correcting and trying to make the painting look better.
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Pearls from artists* # 691
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.
Repeatedly standing in the fire is a requirement of the art life. The initial act of choosing this vocation requires courage, as does sticking with it when others think you should give up. We prioritize an endeavor that strikes the rest of the world as absurd. We repeatedly risk failure and frustration in the drive to grow our practice. We are visionaries at the front of the breaking wave in our culture, calling out difficult realities that no one wants to think about, and we are often beaten back in attempts to silence us for that role.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 688
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Many artists see their studio practice as a religion. Like any other faith, it has rituals, beliefs, devotions, visionaries, martyrs, and even miracles. Our souls have a need to position themselves in the giant scheme of the universe, and art, like spiritual conviction, helps us do that. It allows us to decipher and process the complexities of the world around us. It can make us better humans by telling stories and sharing points of view that stoke compassion, understanding, and empathy. It holds the potential to redeem both the maker and the viewer, transcending quotidian dullness by evoking a deep significance we had forgotten.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 687
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.
PC: Talking about sales, when it comes down to it, don’t you find that most of the time, the true art lovers, the disinterested amateurs, are the ones who can’t afford to buy?
HM: Yes, the man who buys, buys for speculative reasons, and after a year or two says to himself – what’s my painting worth? – he wants to cash in. But who knows whether a picture can be sold profitably at any given point? I have friends who begrudged me the fact that I persuaded them to buy a beautiful painting.
Henri Matisse in Chatting With Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbault
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Pearls from artists* # 684
*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 often think that we should invent another word altogether for what real artists are doing… outside of, and despite, the market, so we could divorce ourselves from what ‘Art’ has devolved into. I aspire to create a new and visionary paradigm far away from the old one. I wish all the art magazines and blogs would declare that there is no longer any money to be made or any fame to be had, so all the people who were in for the wrong reasons would simply go away.
I want artists everywhere to figure out how to tap into their own deep well, the unpredictable source inside that can keep their work fresh and alive. I hope they build confidence to consistently preserve their integrity and independence. I long for them to trust their own intuition, to keep them on their true path as their work evolves. Finally, I yearn for them to reject anything that gets in the way of actualizing their deepest voice, so they might step into that expansive space that the universe has intended for them since the day they appeared on this earth.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
A: I continue working on “Gatecrasher,” 58” x 38,” soft pastel on sandpaper.
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Q: Would you please share your current bio?
A: Here it is.
Barbara Rachko, born in 1953 in Paterson, New Jersey, is a contemporary painter based in New York City, renowned for her large pastel-on-sandpaper paintings inspired by Bolivian Carnival masks. With nearly 40 years dedicated to revolutionizing pastel as a fine art medium, Rachko’s influential blog, Barbara Rachko’s Colored Dust, has garnered over 229,000 subscribers. She is the subject of the acclaimed documentary “Barbara Rachko: True Grit,” available on YouTube, and her ebook “From Pilot to Painter” captures her inspiring journey from a former pilot to an accomplished artist.
Rachko’s work explores the vibrant cultural heritage of Bolivian Carnival masks, and Mexican and Guatemalan folk art. Her meticulous attention to detail is showcased in notable series such as Bolivianos, Black Paintings, and Domestic Threats. In 2023, she was featured in a documentary that premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival, earning the Audience Award and Best in Category Award, further cementing her impact on contemporary art.
Her solo exhibitions include the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery at Walton Arts Center (AR), Louise Jones Brown Gallery at Duke University (NC), Olin Gallery (VA), and La MaMa La Galleria (NY). She trained in photography at the International Center of Photography in New York and studied drawing and pastel techniques at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA. Her works are held in private collections worldwide and have been showcased at prestigious art fairs, including Art Basel Miami, Moon Art Fair in Hamburg, and Art Busan in Korea, affirming her global influence in pastel painting.
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barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 
Q: What kind of internal conversations do you tend to have when you are in the process of making art? (Question from Vedica Art Studios and Gallery)
Jan 10
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: When standing at my easel creating a pastel painting, I focus on formal properties: composition, shape, color, and line. I always strive to produce a painting I’ve never seen before. Even as (perhaps especially as) the creator, I want to be surprised by the final result. My studio days are spent thinking, looking, reacting, and adjusting colors and composition as I refine increasingly tiny details, ensuring all elements work harmoniously. I determine which areas need to recede or advance, which require intricate details to appear three-dimensional, and which are better left as flat areas of color.
These countless adjustments ensure viewers’ eyes are guided around the finished painting in intriguing ways. I often recall something collectors of my pastel paintings shared: they mentioned a New York Times review of a Nan Goldin exhibition, in which the writer stated, “All of the pleasure circuits are fired in looking.” The collectors agreed this is exactly how they feel when viewing my work. Artists live for appreciative comments like these!
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Posted in 2026, An Artist's Life, Creative Process, Studio, Working methods
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