Pearls from artists* # 413
New York, NY
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
We photographers are particularly drawn to light in all of its manifestations. Who knows why? We just simply seem to be attracted to light more than other people, even when we’re not taking photos. We notice little things. The way a curtain might cut a shadow across the floor. The way a blue iris might fold light into itself. The way a child’s skin has a glow without any filters. And as we all know, beautiful caverns can be created by the manner in which water flows through rock. I think there is a parallel with us. The light that flows through us carves our souls.
Rick Sammon in Photo Therapy Motivation and Wisdom
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: Amidst the noisy construction happening next door, I continue slowly working on “Jokester” (tentative title), soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38.” I’ve just begun to add stripes into the shirt.
It is the fifteenth piece in the “Bolivianos” series. Read more about this work at https://barbararachko.art/en/paintings/bolivianos
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Pearls from artists* # 412
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.
The obstacles faced by women who hoped to leave a mark on humankind have, through the millennium, varied in height but not in stubborn persistence. And yet, a great many women have stubbornly ignored them. The desire to put words on a page or marks on a canvas was greater than the accrued social forces that told them they had no right to do so, that they were excluded by their gender from that priestly class called artist. The reason, according to Western tradition, was as old as creation itself: For many, God was the original artist and society had assigned its creator a gender – He. The woman who dared to declare herself an artist in defiance of centuries of such unwavering belief required monstrous strength, to fight not for equal recognition and reward but for something at once more basic and vital: her very life. Her art was her life. Without it, she was nothing. Having no faith that society would broaden its views on artists by dethroning men and accommodating women, in 1928 [Virginia] Woolf offered her fellow writers and painters a formula for survival that allowed them to create, if not with acceptance, then at least unimpeded. A woman artist, she said, needed but two possessions: “money and a room of her own.”
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Q: Are pastel paintings easy to care for?
With “Poseur,” 70” x 50” Framed
A: Yes, they are. I have used only the finest archival and lightfast materials to create and frame them because I want them to last. Here are some instructions.
Always treat pastel paintings with the utmost care. Avoid bumping and other sorts of rough handling.
Pastel paintings should be kept face up at all times, especially when they are being transported long distances. Use an art shipper and ensure they are familiar with the requirement to ship the work flat and face up.
Never hang pastel paintings (or any art!) in direct sunlght! Sunlight makes colors fade over time. Also, moisture droplets can form on the inside of the Plexiglas. When they dry, it leaves marks.
Use a soft cloth and Plexiglas cleaner to dust off the glazing. Never use Windex on Plexiglas.
That’s it!
If you have questions, please contact me at brachko@erols.com.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 411
On top of an unexcavated pyramid, Veracruz, Mexico
*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 reasserts that U.S. artists have learned and borrowed from Mexican traditions and, above all, that people of goodwill in both countries share in the belief that art unites, it doesn’t divide; it can be utilized to attack inequity and exploitation of the past and present but it also expresses hope and yearning for a better existence than can be realized in the present.
Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925 – 1945, edited by Barbara Haskell
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Pearls from artists* # 410
Mexico City
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Faced with the disparities between lived reality and America’s professed ideals of inclusion and equity, countless artists have begun embracing the social role of art and using aesthetic means to speak out against all manner of injustice. In such a climate, the Mexican muralists [Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros] have once again emerged as models of how to marry aesthetic rigor and vitality to socially conscious subject matter that addresses the most fundamental questions concerning our collective pursuit of a more just and equitable society. Not withstanding the rich cultural ties and decades of migration that have long existed between the United States and Mexico, the relationship between the two countries has always been fraught, marked as much by mutual wariness and bouts of hostility as by a spirit of camaraderie and cooperation Yet the ugliness and xenophobia of the recent debates on the American side echoes the worst of the past. It thus seems more imperative than ever to acknowledge the profound and enduring influence Mexican muralism has had on artmaking in the United States and to highlight the beauty and power that can emerge from the free and vibrant cultural exchange between the two countries. As much as did American artists decades ago, artists in the United States today stand to benefit from an awareness of how dynamically and inventively the Mexican muralists used their art to project the ideals of compassion, justice, and solidarity. They remain a source of powerful inspiration for their seamless synthesis of ethics, art, and action.
Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925 – 1945, edited by Barbara Haskell
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Happy Fourth of July! Travel photo of the month*
Washington, DC
* Favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog
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Pearls from artists* # 409
Recent works in progress
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Poets can look at a painting and understand it without having it spelled out [and] painters can read poetry… People say, I don’t understand what it means, about John Ashbery’s poetry. Painters would never say that… The idea of “I don’t understand what it means,” looking at abstract painting and saying, “Explain it to me, what does it mean?” You don’t say that, and you don’t ask people to explain music. And so, poets, painters, composers don’t need explanations. Explanations are for other people… burdened by logic.
Elaine de Kooning quoted in Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Finished and signed lower left
A: At last! I’ve finished and signed “Trickster,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.”
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Pearls from artists* # 408
“No Cure for Insomnia,” pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″ image, 70” x 50” framed
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Classics have nothing to do with aesthetic sophistication. They use the aesthetic as a springboard to something else. The creation of a classic will often require the artist to deviate from prevailing standards in order to push the ordinary vision through. If there is one prerequisite for producing a classic, it is the willingness to follow the vision wherever it leads, even if it demands a breach of convention, technique, or popular taste. (It may not even be a question of if or when, for how can one produce a truly singular work without reinventing the medium to some extent?) We often hear that the master artist is “in love” with her material: that the sculptor loves the marble, the dancer loves the body, the musician loves his instrument. For the maker of classics, however, the medium always seems to be an obstacle; love is never without a tinge of spite. William S. Burroughs was so contemptuous of language that he took to describing it as a disease. He conceived his work as an attempt to confront language in hopes to cure the mind of the “word virus.” Indeed, if the goal of art is to take us beyond the ordinary preoccupations to reach the heart of the Real, it would seem essential that there be a fight, a struggle to wrest from the medium something to which Consensus dictates it is not naturally inclined.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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