Category Archives: Studio
Pearls from artists* # 328
Barbara in her studio, Photo: Izzy Nova
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
An artist’s words are always to be taken cautiously… The artist who discusses the so-called meaning of his work is usually describing a literary side-issue. The core of his original impulse is to be found, if at all, in the work itself. Just the same, the artist must say what he feels…
I want to explain why I did the piece, I don’t see why artists should say anything because the work is supposed to speak for itself. So whatever the artist says about it is like an apology, it is not necessary.
I never talk literally; you have to use analogy and interpretation and leaps of all kinds…
I am suspicious of words. They do not interest me, they do not satisfy me. I suffer from the ways in which words wear themselves out. I distrust the Lacans and Bossuets because they gargle with their own words. I am a very concrete woman. The forms are everything…
With words you can say anything. You can lie as long as the day, but you cannot lie in the recreation of experience…
Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and interview 1923-1997, edited and with texts by Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist
Comments are welcome!
Q: When and where did you start your career in the visual arts?
In the studio, Photo: Maria Cox
A: My journey to becoming an artist was circuitous. In the mid-1980s I was a thirty-something Navy lieutenant. I worked a soul-crushing job as a computer analyst on the midnight shift in a Pentagon basement. We were open 24/7 and supported the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Remembering the joyful Saturdays of my youth in New Jersey, when I had studied with a local painter, I enrolled in a drawing class at the Art League School in Alexandria, Virginia. I loved it! I took more classes and became a highly motivated, full-time art student who worked nights at the Pentagon. After two years and as my skills improved, I discovered my preferred medium – soft pastel on sandpaper.
I knew I had found my calling, submitted my resignation, and left active duty. On October 1, 1989 I became a professional artist. However, I remained in the Navy Reserve for another fourteen years, working at the Pentagon one weekend a month. On November 1, 2003, I retired as a Navy Commander.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you believe in “the big break” for artists?
Barbara’s studio
A: Big breaks sometimes happen, but in my experience an artist’s life is made up of single-minded dedication, persistence, hard work, and lots of small breaks. I recently finished reading “Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never stop Learning” by Leslie Odom, Jr. I like what he has to say to artists here:
“The biggest break is the one you give yourself by choosing to believe in your wisdom, in what you love, and in the gifts you have to offer the waiting world.”
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue slowly working on a small, 26” x 20,” untitled pastel painting.
Comments are welcome!
Start/Finish of “Acolytes,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38” x 58”
Start
Finish, months later
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 322
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.
Think, dear sir, of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking what you will: whether it be remembering your own childhood or yearning toward your own future – only be attentive to that which rises up in you and set it above everything that you observe about you. What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Translation by M.D. Herter Norton
Comments are welcome!
What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: This is my fourth day working on a small (26”x 20”) pastel painting. All of these colors are going to change over the next few months.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Does your attraction to Mexican folk art have anything to do with the way you see life or your taste for color?
Studio corner
A: Initially, it was the fact that these folk-art figures opened up an entire new world to me. I had learned almost nothing about Mexico in school, a fact I found mystifying, considering Mexico is the United States’ southern neighbor.
When I started collecting, I was launched on a rich intellectual adventure with seemingly no end. The folk art figures had so much to teach and prompted many questions. Most were unanswerable, but still, I was curious: who made them, why, how, what did they represent, what did they reveal about the maker’s worldview, how did they fit in with historical and contemporary forces, etc.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do your materials have properties that allow you to maximize what you depict in your work?
Barbara’s studio
A: I work exclusively in soft pastel on sandpaper. Pastel, which is pigment and a binder to hold it together, is as close to unadulterated pigment as an artist can get. It allows for very saturated color, especially as I utilize the self-invented techniques developed and mastered over more than thirty years as an artist. I believe my “science of color” to be unique, completely unlike how any other artist works. I spend three or four months on each painting, applying pastel and blending the layers together to mix new colors directly on the paper.
The sandpaper support allows the build up of 25 to 30 layers of pastel as I slowly and meticulously work for hundreds of hours to complete a painting. The paper is extremely forgiving. I can change my mind, correct, refine, etc. as much as I want until a painting is the best I can create at that moment in time.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue slowly working on a 58” x 38” pastel painting. For now I’ve added a small figure on the right. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll keep it.
Comments are welcome!
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