Blog Archives
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!
Pearls from artists* # 314
“He Just Stood There Grinning,” 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.
For Leonora Carrington and many of her ‘sister’ surrealists, surrealism provided the intellectual, political and artistic milieu that enabled them to come into their own as artists and writers, and to gain recognition for their work in the wider world. Although some of these women had accepted their roles as muses in the lives of male artists, none believed that life as a muse trumped life as an artist. Asked in 1983 how she felt about the male surrealists’ view of women as muses, Leonora offered her testy, if retrospective rejoinder: ‘I thought it was bullshit… I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.’ It is as artists and friends that we remember the women of surrealism today.
Whitney Chadwick in The Militant Muse: Love, War, and the Women of Surrealism
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Q: How do you feel about donating your work to auctions?
Studio with work in progress
A: Generally, it depends on who is doing the asking. If it’s an organization that has been supportive of my work, I am pleased to help with fundraising. If the organization and I have never connnected before, their out-of-the-blue request sometimes feels disrespectful. Artists invest decades, vast amounts of money, and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to become the skilled creators that we are. And a New York artist’s overhead is considerable. I know of no artists who create their hard-fought work only to give it away.
Under certain conditions, however, I will participate. Here is my response to a recent donation request.
Dear…
Thank you for contacting me. Certainly your organization sounds worthwhile.
However, you may be unaware that artists may deduct ONLY the cost of materials when we give our work to auctions. I suggest that you ask one of your supporters to buy a pastel painting and donate it next year (there is a one-year waiting period for collectors to take this tax deduction). Then we have a win-win-win! I get paid, the collector/donor gets to enjoy owning my beautiful work for a year AND take a tax deduction for the full amount that he/she paid for it. Plus, your organization gets to sell my painting at next year’s auction.
Don’t you agree this is a better approach for everyone involved?
Sincerely…
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* #309
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.
It is a strange thing to catalog the conflicting theories as to what the first artists thought they were doing down there in the caves, because the truth is that, to this day, we do not know why we make art. In the end, art may not have been our invention at all. It may well have appeared in history as it does in the life of many individual artists: as an outside call, a sudden flash of inspiration, an inner wanderlust exerting such a powerful pull that ultimately we would have to say that Picasso got it wrong: the early humans did not invent art. Art invented humanity.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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Pearls from artists* # 306
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.
It is the responsibility of artists to pay attention to the world, pleasant or otherwise, and to help us live respectfully in it.
Artists do this by keeping their curiosity and moral sense alive, and by sharing with us their gift for metaphor. Often this means finding similarities between observable fact and inner experience – between birds in a vacant lot, say, and an intuition worthy of Genesis.
More than anything else, beauty is what distinguishes art. Beauty is never less than mystery, but it has within it a promise.
In this way, art encourages us to gratitude and engagement, and is of both personal and civic consequence.
Robert Adams in Art Can Help
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A: Would you agree that there are more opportunities for women artists these days?
At Salomon Arts in Tribeca
A: It’s true that there are more opportunities now for women artists. Indeed, there are more opportunities for ALL artists. Social media has helped immensely in that it allows artists to take charge of our own careers, making us less dependent on the approval, largesse, and/or validation of art world gatekeepers.
However, at the highest levels of our profession, there are many inequities. As more women become art museum directors, collectors of contemporary art, and leaders whose taste matters, the status of all female artists is bound to improve to become more aligned with that of males.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 304
“Palaver,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26″ x 20″
* 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 job as a fiction writer is to write fiction, not to review it. Art isn’t explanation. Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains. (Or so it seems to me, which is why I have a problem with the kind of modern museum art that involves reading what the artist says about a work in order to find out why one should look at it or “how to experience” it).
Ursula K. Le Guin in No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters
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Pearls from artists* # 303
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.
If the majority of aesthetic works fail to astonish us, then. it may have something to do with the ingrained insensitivity that is part and parcel of contemporary life. It may also have something to do with the fact that art, as Solzhenitsyn said so eloquently, is constantly being put to uses that are at odds with its essence. Indeed, the moment a work of art appears, all kinds of other factors come into play. Cultural institutions, social pressures, laws, customs, fashions, and trends pull it in every direction. Fame, money, conformism, attention-seeking, and knee-jerk rebellion can lure artists to abandon their own vision in order to emulate those of others, to adhere to formulas and paint by numbers, or to value external convention over vision. The inevitable result is a lot of bad art that couldn’t astonish anyone. It should come as no surprise, when looking over the glut of aesthetic objects that proliferate around us, if we feel the need to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic art – which is to say, art that astonishes us by attuning us to the radical mystery of being, and art that attempts to reinforce our shared illusions, comforting or intimidating us with the notion that there is nothing to wonder at since everything has been figured out.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 298
Untitled c-print, 24″ x 24″ edition of 5
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Interviewer: What do you think about the artist being supported by the state?
Parker: Naturally, when penniless, I think it’s superb. I think that the art of the country so immeasurably adds to its prestige that if you want to have writers and artists – persons who live precariously in our country – the state must help. I do not think that any kind of artist thrives under charity, by which I mean one person or organization giving him money, here and there, this and that – that’s no good. The difference between the state giving and the individual patron is that one is charity and one isn’t. Charity is murder and you know it. But I do think that if the government supports its artists, they need have no feeling of gratitude – the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world – or baskets being brought to them, or apple polishing. Working for the state, for Christ’s sake, are you grateful to your employers? Let the state see what its artists are trying to do – like France and the Academie Francaise. The artists are a part of their country and their country should recognize this, so both it and the artists can take pride in their efforts. Now I mean that, my dear.
Dorothy Parker in Women at Work: Interviews From the Paris Review
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Q: For many artists the hardest thing is getting to work in the morning. Do you have any rituals that get you started?
Entering Barbara’s studio
A: That has rarely been a problem because I love to work. The highlight of my day is time spent in the studio. After arriving, I begin working immediately or I read about art for a short time. When I pick up a pastel, it’s to begin working on something left unfinished from the day before.
Generally, I keep regular hours and strive to use studio time well. As a professional artist, one absolutely must be a self-starter! No one else cares about our work the way we do. Really why would they, when only the maker has invested so much love, knowledge, craftsmanship, experience, devotion, insight, money, etc. in the effort to evolve and improve.
Comments are welcome!
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