Blog Archives
Q: As an artist what would you say is your particular ‘superpower’?
Barbara’s studio
A: I have been told that it is my unique way of composing images or, in other words, how I deliberately move the viewer’s eye around the picture. More exactly, it’s the way I combine flat shapes, patterns, angles, forms, modeling, decoration, details, lights, and darks in surprising ways when I make pastel paintings or pick up a camera.
But I think there’s a secondary, more subtle element: my understanding of and sensitivity to using color for psychological effect. The way I use color in pastel paintings is intuitive. This is something I haven’t reflected on very much yet, but will examine in a future post.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 187
“Big Wow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
As George Grosz said, at that last meeting he attended at the National Institute, “How did I come to be an artist? Endless curiosity, observation, research – and a great amount of joy in the thing.” It was a matter of taking a liking to things. Things that were in accordance with your taste. I think that was it. And we didn’t care how unhomogenous they might seem. Didn’t Aristotle say that it is the mark of a poet to see resemblances between apparently incongruous things? There was any amount of attraction about it.
Marianne Moore in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews Second Series, edited by George Plimpton
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 185
Beginning of a 20″ x 26″ pastel painting
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
All of us fail to match our dream of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That’s why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won’t, which is why this condition is healthy. Once he did it, once he matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide. I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
William Faulkner in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews First Series
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 179
“Offering,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 20″ x 26″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Michael Kimmelman: You studied art in school. You started collecting early.
David Bowie: Yeah, I collected very early on. I have a couple of Tintorettos, which I’ve had for many, many years. I have a Rubens. Art was, seriously, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings. The same work can change me in different ways, depending on what I’m going through. For instance, somebody I like very much is Frank Auerbach. I think there are some mornings that if we hit each other a certain way – myself and a portrait by Auerbach – the work can magnify the kind of depression I’m going through. It will give spiritual weight to the angst. Some mornings I’ll look at it and go: “Oh, God, Yeah! I know!” But that same painting, on a different day, can produce in me the incredible feeling of the triumph of trying to express myself as an artist. I can look at it and say: “My God, Yeah! I want to sound like that looks.”
“At Heart an Artist with Many Muses,” by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, Friday, January 15, 2016
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you use a sketchbook?
Hudson Yards, NYC
A: I used to use a sketchbook early on, when I was just beginning to find my way as an artist. Sketching on location helped to crystalize my ideas about art, about technique, and about what I hoped to accomplish in the near term. These days I spend so many hours in the studio – it’s my day job – that I often need a mental and physical break from using my eyes and from looking at and composing images.
What I do instead is to walk around New York (and elsewhere) with a camera. Photography for me sometimes serves as an alternative to sketching. It’s a way to continue to think about art, to experiment, and to contemplate what makes an arresting image without actually having to be working in the studio.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Have any artists influenced you technically?
Barbara at work, Photo: Marianne Barcellona
A: I’d have to say no one, because my technique of using soft pastel on sandpaper is largely self-invented and it continues to slowly evolve. I apply up to thirty layers of pigment, blending it with my fingers, and creating new colors directly on the sandpaper. It is a rather meticulous process that suits my personality.
My unique way of applying and mixing pastel is a richly complex science of color. This intricate technique is one of the reasons that my pastel paintings cannot be forged by anyone.
Every great artist throughout history has invented their own techniques and created a world that is uniquely theirs, with its own iconography, its own laws, and its own specific concerns. Artists who are most worthy of the name create their own tasks and make and break their own rules.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Your pastel paintings are immediately recognizable as yours alone. Did you consciously try to develop a signature style in your work?
Barbara’s studio
A: I don’t believe that is even possible. An artist’s style is something that evolves with plain hard work and experience, over many years of trial and error, as one finds what techniques work best and discards those that don’t. It is a process of continually experimenting, refining, and clarifying. In other words, style is something that emerges naturally as you gradually strive to improve your art-making.
Style develops in close connection to what an artist is saying as she undergoes a very personal and idiosyncratic journey. Again, it would seem improbable for an artist to strive for any particular style, since style is not something over which an artist can exert much conscious control.
I would even say that each artist’s unique style is inevitable. It would be nearly impossible now to make a pastel painting or photograph that does NOT look like a Rachko.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What was the first painting you ever sold?
“Bryan’s Ph.D.”, 11″ x 13 1/2″, soft pastel on sandpaper
A: I believe my first sale was “Bryan’s Ph.D.” I made it in 1990 as one of several small paintings created to improve my skills at rendering human hands in pastel. I had recently left the Navy and was building a career as a portrait artist. Bryan, my late husband, was often my model for these studies, not only because it was convenient, but because he had such beautiful hands.
In 1990 Bryan was working on his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland. In this painting he is drawing a diagram that illustrates a theoretical point about “international public goods,” the subject of his research. He was sitting in an old wooden rocking chair in our backyard in Alexandria, VA. I still own the chair and the house. I photographed his hands close-up and then created the painting. I don’t remember which of Bryan’s cameras I used, but it was one that took 35 mm film; perhaps his Nikon F-2. Somewhere I must still have the negative and the original reference photo.
“Bryan’s Ph.D.” is 11″ x 13 1/2″ and it sold for $500 at a monthly juried exhibition at The Art League in Alexandria. I have not seen it since 1990. (Above is a photograph of “Bryan’s Ph.D.” from my portfolio book).
Not long ago the owner contacted me, explaining that she had received the painting as a gift from her now ex-husband. She was selling it because it evoked bitter memories of her divorce. Her phone call was prompted by uncertainty about the painting’s value now. She had a likely buyer and needed to know what price to charge.
I was saddened because I have so many beautiful memories of this particular painting and of an idyllic time in my life with Bryan. He was on a leave of absence from the Pentagon to work on his dissertation, while I was finished with active duty. At last I was a full time artist, busily working in the spare bedroom that we had turned into my first studio.
My conversation with the owner was a reminder that once paintings are let out into the world, they take on associations that have nothing to do with the personal circumstances surrounding their creation. In short, what an artist creates solely out of love, stands a good chance of not being loved or appreciated by others. This is one reason to only sell my work to people I select personally. I ended the telephone conversation hoping that “Bryan’s Ph.D.” fares better in its new home.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 167
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.
So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged.
William Faulkner in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, First Series
Comments are welcome!
Q: What do you think are the most important qualities in an artist?
“Big Deal,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
A: Two essentials immediately come to mind. I believe imagination and curiosity are very important qualities, not only for artists, but for anyone who hopes to look back on a well-lived life. As Lauren Bacall famously said, “Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.”
It is curiosity that keeps people laser-focused on a lifetime journey of learning. I’d venture to say that curiosity is the not-so-secret quality of accomplished people in every profession. We humans can never know enough!
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 