Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 696
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Although it’s important to make communities with like-minded people — people who are your age, your generation, who are working on projects that have resonance with yours — I am a firm believer in crossing generations to find mentorship and inspiration, and a sense of furthering the craft. So I’d say that as you begin to seek mentorship, be creative about where you look. Look in unlikely places, and make it more likely that you will cross boundaries and reach a wider, more culturally and intellectually diverse audience.
Anna Deavere Smith in Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts — for Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind”
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* #694
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Long ago, when I was in my insecure twenties, I met a clever, independent, creative, and powerful woman in her mid-seventies, who offered me a superb piece of life wisdom.
She said: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what other people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we’re so worried decide that we don’t give a damn about what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.”
They aren’t. They weren’t. They never were.
People are mostly thinking about themselves. People don’t have time to worry about what you’re doing, or how well you’re doing it, because they’re all caught up in their own dramas. People’s attention may be drawn to you for a moment (if you succeed or fail spectacularly and publicly, for instance), but that attention will soon enough revert back to where it’s always been—on themselves. While it may seem lonely and horrible at first to imagine that you aren’t anyone’s first order of business, there is also a great release to be found in this idea. You are free, because everyone is too busy fussing over themselves to worry that much about you.
Go be whomever you want to be, then.
Do whatever you want to do.
Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life.
Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that no one will even notice.
And that’s awesome.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Q: You read books on Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers. How has philosophy and your personal experience shaped the latest series, Bolivianos? (Question from Vedica Art Studios and Gallery)
A: It’s difficult to pinpoint how philosophy specifically shaped my work because my curiosity spans so many subjects. Some critics have described me as a Renaissance woman, remarking on my wide-ranging and voracious reading. It’s true—I’m genuinely interested in practically everything!
In pursuit of making art, I have undertaken in-depth studies of numerous intriguing fields: drawing, color, composition, gross anatomy, art and art history, the art business, film history, photography, psychology, mythology, literature, philosophy, religion, music, jazz history, and archaeology—particularly ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya) and South America (the Inca and their ancestors).
Since the early 1990s, my inspiration and subject matter have come primarily from international travel to remote parts of the globe, especially Mexico, Central America, and South America. Travel is by far the best education! By visiting distant destinations, I have developed a deep reverence for people and cultures around the world. People everywhere are connected by our shared humanity.
These travels, supplemented by extensive research at home, are essential parts of my creative process. Research can be solitary and demanding, but I truly enjoy it. I want to know as much as possible, and this curiosity generates ideas for new work, propelling me into unexplored creative realms.
Foreign travel always expands our ways of thinking. This rich mixture of creative influences continually evolves and finds its way into my pastel paintings. Working, learning, evolving, and growing—I am perpetually curious and can hardly imagine a better way to spend my time on Earth!
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Q: Do you have any big projects coming up?
A: I certainly do! I have been a painter for forty years, and for most of that time, my work has been shaped by foreign travel. At seventy-two, I find myself thinking about legacy — what I want to leave behind. Documenting my creative process on film has become an essential part of this objective.
In the “Bolivianos” series, I have been creating pastel-on-sandpaper paintings that transform the vivid masks of the Bolivian Carnival into universal archetypes. I first encountered these masks at a museum in La Paz in 2017.
Circumstances have aligned perfectly for an exciting next step: another trip to Bolivia and a new documentary. Our upcoming film will be a follow-up to the award-winning “Barbara Rachko: True Grit” (released in 2023), marking a deeper exploration of my thirty-five-year engagement with folk art from Mexico, Central America, and South America.
(See https://youtu.be/JJWLy84kXI0?si=v7JHIq9ViYGgs76U)
In February 2026, I will return to Bolivia with a two-person film crew to experience Carnival firsthand — to immerse myself in its rhythm, history, and meaning. Recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, this festival offers an extraordinary window into Bolivia’s cultural soul.
Our film will chronicle my journey as essential research — a vital continuation of my creative inquiry over these past decades. With this trip and film, I hope to create my next body of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings, rich with color, spirit, and the enduring vitality of Oruro’s Carnival.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 674
Southampton, New York 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.
Everything about art requires dedication and presence. It is an intimate act, demanding the kind of sustained devotion we rarely lavish on other human beings. The artist’s generosity is highly impractical because there is no guarantee that it will ever be appreciated. Consider the level of optimism needed to repeatedly spend, even deplete, whatever reserves might be required to create the most superlative gift you could offer, one that is essentially given away to the world for free. The work we make is a love letter in a bottle, thrown into the ocean. It may or may not be read. We do not negotiate. like businesspeople, ‘You give me this, and I will give you that…’ We bequeath our pursuit of excellence and creative spirit to our audience, without reservation or qualification. We know what we have invested in it and sleep better because of it.
– Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 670
*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’ve had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life – constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I’m very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be.
Over time I’ve found the right tone of voice for these assertions, too. It’s best to be insistent, but affable. Repeat yourself, but don’t get shrill. Speak to your darkest and most negative interior voices the way a hostage negotiator speaks to a violent psychopath: calmly, but firmly. Most of all, never back down. You cannot afford to back down. The life you are negotiating to save, after all, is your own.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 667
“Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”, 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.
This is the eternal origin of art – that a human being confronts a form that wants to be one a work of art through him. Not a figment of his soul, but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being […] and the work is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me. The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor describe: I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all the clarity of the experienced world.
Martin Buber quoted in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice by Kate Kretz
Comments are welcome!
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* # 657
Storm King Art Center, Cornwall-ON-Hudson, 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.
Students told me he [Jack Gilbert] was the most extraordinary man that they’s ever encountered. He had seemed not quite of this world, they said. He seemed to live in a state of uninterrupted marvel, and he encouraged them to do the same. He didn’t so much teach them how to write poetry, they said, but why: because of delight. Because of stubborn gladness. He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of the world.
Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small – far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
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