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Q: What is your process? (Question from artamour)
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

A: For thirty-six years I have worked exclusively in soft pastel on sandpaper. Pastel, which is pigment and a binder to hold it together, is as close to unadulterated color as an artist can get. It allows for very saturated color, especially employing the self-invented techniques I have developed and mastered. I believe my “science of color” is unique, completely unlike how any other artist works. I spend three to four months on each painting, applying pastel and blending the layers together to mix new colors on the paper.
The acid-free sandpaper support allows the buildup 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.
My techniques for using soft pastel achieve rich velvety textures and exceptionally vibrant color. Blending with my fingers, I painstakingly apply dozens of layers of pastel onto the sandpaper. In addition to the thousands of pastels that I have to choose from, I make new colors directly on the paper. Regardless of size, each pastel painting takes three to four months and hundreds of hours to complete.
I have been devoted to soft pastel from the beginning. In my blog and in numerous interviews online and elsewhere, I continue to expound on its merits. For me no other fine art medium comes close.
My subject matter is unique. I am drawn to Mexican, Guatemalan, and Bolivian cultural objects—masks, carved wooden animals, papier mâché figures, and toys. On trips to these countries and elsewhere I frequent local mask shops, markets, and bazaars searching for the figures that will populate my pastel paintings. How, why, when, and where these objects come into my life is an important part of the creative process. Each pastel painting is a highly personal blend of reality, fantasy, and autobiography.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2022, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Studio, Working methods
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Pearls from artists* # 471
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Impresario Peter Sellars remarks how “Vermeer [spent] hours, days, and weeks painting a small corner of a small room in an act of ritualistically informed meditation that leads to new possibilities of awareness and love.” The time of making, Sellars adds, influences the time of viewing: “The act [of painting] itself opens up and refines consciousness by slowing down time as it focuses the eye.” Sellars’ language of ritual and meditation anticipates my purposes. He associates painting not only with materiality but also with spiritual practices – indeed, he yokes the two: “The act of painting has always been charged with shamanic energies. Using bits of animal bone, hair, and sinew, mixing them with earth, and applying them steadily and with great concentration to a cave wall, a parchment, or a human face is an act of calling and recalling.”
Arden Reed in Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2021, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Quotes
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Q: When did you start using the sandpaper technique and why (Question from “Arte Realizzata”)
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

A: In the late 1980s when I was studying at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA, I enrolled in a three-day pastel workshop with Albert Handel, an artist known for his southwest landscapes in pastel and oil paint. I had just begun working with soft pastel and was experimenting with paper. Handel suggested I try Ersta fine sandpaper. I did and nearly three decades later, I’ve never used anything else.
This paper is acid-free and accepts dry media, mainly pastel and charcoal. It allows me to build up layer upon layer of pigment and blend, without having to use a fixative. The tooth of the paper almost never gets filled up so it continues to hold pastel. (On the rare occasion when the tooth DOES fill up, which sometimes happens with problem areas that are difficult to resolve, I take a bristle paintbrush, dust off the unwanted pigment, and start again). My entire technique – slowly applying soft pastel, blending and creating new colors directly on the paper, making countless corrections and adjustments, rendering minute details, looking for the best and/or most vivid colors – evolved in conjunction with this paper.
I used to say that if Ersta ever went out of business and stopped making sandpaper, my artist days would be over. Thankfully, when that DID happen, UArt began making a very similar paper. I buy it in two sizes – 22″ x 28″ sheets and 56″ wide by 10-yard-long rolls. The newer version of the rolled paper is actually better than the old, because when I unroll it, it lays flat immediately. With Ersta I would lay the paper out on the floor for weeks before the curl would give way and it was flat enough to work on.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2021, Alexandria (VA), An Artist's Life, Creative Process, Working methods
Tags: Accepts, acid-free, adjustments, Albert Handel, Alexandria, allows, anything, applying, Art League School, artist, before, better, blending, bristle, business, charcoal, colors, conjunction, continues, corrections, countless, creating, details, difficult, directly, dry media, enough, entire, Ersta, evolved, experimenting, filled, fixative, happens, immediately, landscapes, looking, making, minute, newer, occassion, oil paint, paintbrush, pastel, pastel-on-sandpaper painting, pigment, problem, rendering, resolve, rolled, sandpaper, similar, slowly, soft pastel, sometimes, southwest, stopped, studying, technique, UArt, unroll, unwanted, version, workshop, wotking
Q: How do you work and approach your subject? (Question from “Arts Illustrated”)
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust

A: Undoubtedly, I could not make my work without UART sandpaper since my entire pastel technique evolved around it. I use 400 0r 500 grit. My favorite thing about it is its ‘tooth’ (i.e. texture or roughness).
Over the many months I spend creating a pastel painting, I build layer upon layer of soft pastel. Because the paper I use is relatively “toothy,” it accepts all of the pastel the painting needs. And as many people know, I own and use thousands of soft pastels!
Many layers of soft pastel and several months of studio time go into creating each painting. My self-invented technique is analogous to the glazing techniques used by the Old Masters, who slowly built up layers of thin oil paint to achieve a high degree of finish. Colors were not only mixed physically, but optically.
Similarly, I gradually build up layers of soft pastel, as many as thirty, to create a pastel painting. After applying a color, I blend it with my fingers and push it into the sandpaper’s tooth. It mixes with the color beneath to create a new color, continually adding richness, saturation, and intensity to the piece. By the time a pastel painting is finished, the colors are bold, vibrant, and exciting.
From the beginning in the 1980s I used photographs as reference material and my late husband, 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 several 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.
My blog, “Barbara Rachko’s Colored Dust,” 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, I like to think, has helped me to become a better writer.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2021, Alexandria (VA), Creative Process, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods
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Q: What kind of art do you create?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: I live in the West Village in New York City and have been a working artist for thirty-four years. I create original pastel paintings that use my large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art – masks, carved wooden animals, papier mache figures, and toys – as subject matter. Blending with my fingers, I spend months painstakingly applying dozens of layers of soft pastel onto acid-free sandpaper. My self-invented technique achieves extraordinarily rich, vibrant color and results in paintings that uniquely combine reality, fantasy, and autobiography. Please see https://barbararachko.art/en/
For the last three years I have been working on a series called, “Bolivianos,” based on an exhibition of Carnival masks seen in La Paz. Art critics and others have said that these are my strongest pastel paintings so far. As I write I am working on the fifteenth piece in the series.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2020, An Artist's Life, Bolivianos, Pastel Painting, Studio, The West Village
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Q: How many days a week do you work on your art?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: My life is devoted to art and to art-making. Working in pastel is slow and labor-intensive – in a good year I make four or five pastel paintings – so maintaining good work habits is imperative. As a fulltime professional artist, I strive to keep regular studio hours. I work five days a week, roughly seven hours a day.
However, running the business side of things is an every day activity: marketing, interviews, applying for exhibitions, making photographs, documenting my professional activities, sending JPEGs, responding to inquiries, etc. There is always something to do!
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2020, An Artist's Life, Art Business, Pastel Painting, Studio, Working methods
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Tags: activities, activity, applying, art-making, artist, “Jokester”, business, devoted, documenting, every day, Exhibitions, fulltime, imperative, inquiries, interviews, maintaining, making, marketing, pastel paintings, photographs, professional, regular, responding, roughly, running, sending, something, Studio, working
Q: Can you give us your current elevator pitch?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: Here it is:
I am a New York visual artist, blogger, and author. For thirty-four years I have been creating original pastel-on-sandpaper paintings that depict my large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art – masks, carved wooden animals, papier mache figures, and toys. “Bolivianos,” my current series, is based on a mask exhibition I saw and photographed in La Paz in 2017 at the National Museum of Folklore and Ethnography.
My technique is self-invented and involves applying dozens of layers of soft pastel onto acid-free sandpaper to create new colors directly on the paper. Each pastel painting takes several months to complete. Typically, I make four or five each year. I achieve extraordinarily rich, vibrant color in pastel paintings that are a unique combination of reality, fantasy, and autobiography.
My background is unusual for an artist. I am a pilot, a retired Navy Commander, and a 9/11 widow. Besides making art, I am a published blogger and author best known for my popular blog, “Barbara Rachko’s Colored Dust” (53,000+ subscribers!) and my eBook, “From Pilot to Painter,” on Amazon and iTunes.
Please see images and more at http://barbararachko.art/en/
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2020, An Artist's Life, Bolivianos, Pastel Painting, Studio
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Q: What is your favorite thing about creating on sandpaper? (Cassandra Alvarado Oliphant via Instagram)
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: Undoubtedly, I could not make my work without UART sandpaper since my entire pastel technique evolved around it. I use 400 and 500 grit. My favorite thing about it is its ‘tooth’ (i.e. texture or roughness).
Over the many months I spend creating a painting, I build layer upon layer of soft pastel. Because this paper is relatively “toothy,” it accepts all of the pastel the painting needs. And as many people know, I own and use thousands of soft pastels!
Many layers of soft pastel and several months of studio time go into creating each painting. My self-invented technique is analogous to the glazing techniques used by the Old Masters, who slowly built up layers of thin oil paint to achieve a high degree of finish. Colors were not only mixed physically, but optically.
Similarly, I gradually build up layers of soft pastel, as many as thirty, to create a pastel painting. After applying a color, I blend it with my fingers and push it into the sandpaper’s tooth. It mixes with the color beneath to create a new color, continually adding richness, saturation, and intensity to the piece. By the time a pastel painting is finished, the colors are bold, vibrant, and exciting.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2020, Art Works in Progress, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Studio, Working methods
Tags: Accepts, adding, analogous, applying, beneath, build up, Cassandra Alvarado Oliphant, continually, create, degree, exciting, favorite, fingers, finish, glazing, gradually, Instagram, intensity, layers, oil paint, Old Masters, optically, painting, pastel technique, physically, relatively, richness, roughness, sandpaper, saturation, self-invented, soft pastel, texture, thousands, tooth, UART sandpaper, vibrant
Q: Would you speak about the meaning of your work and the different materials you use?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: It is as difficult to explain the meaning of my art as it is to interpret the meaning of life! I am invested in and concerned with process: foreign travel, prodigious reading, devotion to craft, months of slow meticulous work in the studio trying to create an exciting work of art that has never been seen before, etc. I love making pastel paintings! Many years ago I challenged myself to push the limits of what soft pastel can achieve. I am still doing so.
I leave it to others – viewers, arts writers, critics, art historians – to study my creative journey and talk about meanings. I believe an artist is inspired to create and viewers ponder the creation. I would not presume to tell anyone how to react to my work.
For many years I have been devoted to promoting soft pastel as a fine art medium. There are excellent reasons it has been around for five hundred years! It is the most permanent of media. There’s no liquid binder to cause oxidizing or cracking over time, as happens with oil paint. Pastel colors are intense because they are close to being pure pigment. Pastel allows direct application (no brushes) with no drying time and no color changes.
I use UArt acid-free sandpaper. This is not sandpaper from a hardware store. It is made for artists who work in pastel and allows me to build up layers of pigment without using a fixative. My process – slowly applying and layering pastels, blending and mixing new colors directly on the paper, making countless adjustments, searching for the best and/or most vivid colors – continually evolves. Each pastel painting takes months to create.
Comments are welcome!
Posted in 2018, An Artist's Life, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Studio, Working methods
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Q: Do your materials have properties that allow you to maximize what you depict in your work?
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
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!
Posted in 2018, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Studio, Working methods
Comments Off on Q: Do your materials have properties that allow you to maximize what you depict in your work?
Tags: applying, artist, blending, change my mind, correct, create, depict, developed, express, forgiving, layers, mastered, materials, maximize, meticulously, pigment, properties, refine, sandpaper, saturated color, science of color, self-invented, soft pastel, Studio, support, techniques