Blog Archives
Q: Do you have any rituals that you do in the mornings before you begin working?
Art From Your Core by Kate Kretz
A: When I arrive at the studio in the morning it’s rare for me to immediately start working. Usually I read something art-related. At the moment I’m rereading Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice by Kate Kretz. This is a fabulous book for visual artists. It is a must-read and has become my current art bible! As usual I am struggling to understand aspects of the art business and figure out what’s next to get my work appreciated and collected by a new audience. Art From Your Core reminds why I decided to make art in the first place and what I need to do to continue to improve. It helps reconnect with forgotten parts of myself and is a much-needed reminder of what I love most about being an artist.
Balancing the creative and business aspects of my art practice is an ongoing struggle. I imagine this is true for most artists. Both jobs are so important. An artist needs an appreciative audience – very few artists devote their lives to art-making so that the work will remain in a closet – but I also believe this (from a note hand-written years ago that I tacked to the studio wall): “Just make the work. None of the rest matters.”
Comments are welcome.
In celebration of the 13th anniversary of my blog three days from now, I am republishing the very first post from July 15, 2012. Q: What does it take to be an artist, especially one living and working in New York?
Barbara’s Studio (in 2012) with works in progress.
A: The three Big P’s – Patience, Persistence, and Passion. Without all three you will not have the stamina to work tirelessly for very little external reward. You can expect help from no one.
There are so many obstacles to art-making and countless reasons to just give up. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that great art gets made at all. So why do we do it? Above all it’s about making our time on earth matter, about devotion to our innate gifts and love of our hard-fought creative process.
And, my God, it even gets harder as we get older! So what do we do? We dig in that much deeper. It’s a most noble and sacred calling – you know when you have it – and that’s what separates those of us who are in it for the long haul from the wimps, fakers, and hangers-on. I say to my fellow artists who continue to work despite the endless challenges, we are all true heroes!
These words still ring true and it’s good, even for me, to occasionally be reminded.
Most importantly, THANK YOU to my 222,000+ subscribers for taking this journey with me. When I began this blog in 2012, I had no idea it would prove to be so popular… WOW!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 659
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Your only goal is to be the purest and strongest version of yourself, and to articulate that as fully as possible through your creations. Avoid any enticements that threaten to eclipse the priority of your work, to lure you off in another direction toward a different goal. You are here to spend a lifetime exploring and refining what excites you.
Like Olympic athletes, trailblazing artists do not waste a second looking around at their competition to measure how they are doing. They do not look to the sidelines to measure their applause. They just keep moving forward, in the focused direction of their vision. When you possess a quiet, solid confidence and you are completely unshaken (not even a twitch) when someone looks at your work and says, ‘I don’t really like it,’ you have arrived. If you are not there yet, keep practicing. The opinions of others are simply the ever-shifting clouds, moving across your infinite azure sky.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 658
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.
A civilized society needs not only doctors, lawyers, and teachers but also artists, craftspeople, and other creatives to make our earthly existence compelling, thoughtful, and vibrant. Most people work to buy a bigger house, a newer car, or better vacations for themselves and their families. Artists devote their lives to making our world a more beautiful, truthful, and equitable place for everyone. They put their labor in service of those they might never see, for rewards that are never guaranteed. To my mind, this is a magnanimous pursuit… and about as unselfish as you can get.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 656
At Storm King Art Center, Cornwall-On-Hudson, NY. Photo: Susan Erlichman
*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 world needs artists more than they know, and you are entitled to be one of them. We altruistically create gifts, with no assurance those gifts will be appreciated. Like social workers, we do not make a lot of money, but we improve the quality of people’s lives through ripple effects. When our work shifts the perceptions of one viewer, the transformation often radiates to others around them. That includes dialogue and pushes the world toward more truth or justice and inspires others to do the same.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 655
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
My creative friends are some of the most hard-working, motivated people I know. While many non-artists have nine-to-five jobs and then relax at home, our work is never done. Yet, we are bombarded with tropes in books, movies, and television suggesting that we have chosen a ‘slacker’ profession. Even wildly successful artists can have family members who think they are self-absorbed, or that they should ‘get a real job.’ According to genius and award-winning filmmaker, Werner Herzog, his brother still routinely makes fun of his profession (Brooks, 2020). Some may call us selfish and tell us that we are only looking for attention, or feeding our egos. They may ask, “When are you going to grow up?” or ignorantly proclaim, “How nice it must be to only work when you want to.” Regardless of intention, this is not support.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 654
*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 cynical art world, where ‘nothing is a miracle,’ benefits from disempowered artists who have been tricked into feeling devalued, and trained to live at the mercy of the marketplace. But the exact opposite is true. The art world would collapse without our coveted holy vision. Artists are born with unconventional gifts that mark them as innovative thought leaders. Society is only beginning to understand how these gifts may be employed. We possess the power to expose what is going on beneath the surface, initiate difficult conversations, and help people process an increasingly complex world. We fire bullets of truth to pierce the ever-thickening wall of relentless lies. We see things more clearly, precisely because we are on the outside. We foster empathy and point out our common humanity. We remind people that they do not have to go along with this; there are other ways to live. We have the conviction to scream at the top of our lungs when society is veering terribly off course. That the antidote to capitalism is meaning. At our best, through a rather miraculous process, artists change the world.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you feel about the fact that more people view an artist’s work online than ever see it in person?
A: This has been a dilemma for decades. Don’t get me wrong. Artists are indeed fortunate to have alternative ways to share our art, such as on the internet, but there is just no substitute for seeing art in person! I remember friends telling me about a review of a Nan Goldin exhibition that said, “All of the pleasure circuits are fired in looking.” That rarely happens when you view art online. Yet this is how most people experience our work – at a remove and on a small screen.
Nowadays, a global audience will see art on their phones instead of in our studios or in a gallery or museum. My pastel paintings are quite large and very detailed so when people finally see them in person, they are often surprised. They had gotten used to seeing them in a much smaller scale online, where very few of the meticulous and subtle details I incorporate into them are visible.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 648
“Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”
*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 prefer to speak in terms of the artist’s voice. Voice is deeper, manifested from the very core of your being. It is a synthesis of the experiences, intellectual concepts, and aesthetic interests you possess, executed in your distinctive way, in the formal, emotional, and intellectual language of your chosen medium. When successful, the realization of your voice follows a gestalt principle. The combination of your ideas and the work’s physical embodiment is greater than the sum of its parts and distinguishes your outcome from everyone else’s. If we wrote down a single concept and handed it to a dozen artists, we would get very different responses from each of them, and some works would be a stronger synthesis of ideas and execution. As Frank Stella once said, “There are no good ideas for paintings, there are only good paintings… the painting IS the idea (Saltz, 2020:42).”
The art that we recognize as having singular, identifying features, those formal aspects that allow us to immediately see a work as ‘a David Wojnarowicz’ or ‘a Julie Mehretu,’ were not the product of a singular flash of brilliance. These qualities evolved as part of a sustained, life-long, ever-deepening investigation to articulate their specific and singular vision. Our voice comes from tapping into the depths of our own consciousness, then distilling the most powerful aspects of that awareness. Voice also expands and deepens over time. It evolves along with the artist.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Q: Does your work look different to you on days when you are sad, happy, etc.?
Barbara’s Studio
A: I am much more critical on days when I am sad so that the faults, imperfections, and things I wish I had done better stand out. Fortunately, all of my work is framed behind plexiglas so I can’t easily go back in to touch up perceived faults. I am reminded of the expression, “Always strive to improve, whenever possible. It is ALWAYS possible!” However, I’ve learned that re-working a painting is a bad idea. You are no longer deeply involved in making it and the zeitgeist has changed. The things you were concerned with are gone: some are forgotten, others are less urgent.
For most artists our work is autobiography. Art is personal. When I look at a completed pastel painting, I usually remember exactly what was happening in my life as I created it. Each piece is a snapshot – maybe a time capsule, if anyone could decode it – that reflects and records a particular moment. When I finally pronounce a piece finished and sign it, that’s it, THE END. It’s as good as I can make it at that point in time. I’ve incorporated everything I was thinking about, what I was reading, how I was feeling, what I valued, art exhibitions I visited, programs that I heard on the radio or watched on television, music that I listened to, what was going on in New York, in the country, and in the world.
It is still a mystery how this heady mix finds its way into the work. During the time that I spend on it, each particular painting teaches me everything it has to teach. A painting requires months of looking, reacting, correcting, searching, thinking, re-thinking, revising. Each choice is made for a reason and together these decisions dictate what the final piece looks like. On days when I’m sad I tend to forget that. On happier days I remember that the framed pastel paintings that you see have an inevitability to them. If all art is the result of one’s having gone through an experience to the end, as I believe it is, then the paintings could not, and should not, look any differently.
Comments are welcome.
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