Blog Archives
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!
Q: What makes you just want to run back to the studio and start something new?
Beginnings
A: For nearly four decades, I have always worked in series, which means that one pastel painting leads quite naturally into the next. Considerable thought and planning go into each one before I ever begin, so it would be uncharacteristic for me to just start something new out of nowhere.
That said, my favorite part of the months-long creative process is when I am starting a brand new pastel painting. I get excited each time I begin a new piece because beginnings are full of so much possibility! Soon I will be looking at something I have never created before. I’ll watch it gradually take shape over months and will be challenged to solve unforeseeable problems, to continually refine and improve it along the way. The goal is always, of course, to resolve it into some sort of successful existence. Whatever happens, I know I am about to go on a very intriguing journey that will undoubtedly expand my technical knowledge and make me a much better artist.
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* # 642
New York City
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Radical changes in our culture threaten to undermine the potency of art and artists alike. Disparate forces conspire to lower the bar for how we expect art to function. As decades go by, we are educating and evolving to value left-brain strengths over holistic right-brain thought, with disastrous consequences for humanity… Deep contemplation has been hijacked by addictive technology. Rising authoritarianism strives to squash dissenting and diverse voices, as well as historical truths and critical thinking skills. Social media approval affects the art that is produced, shared, and validated. Easily digested work is promoted, while the most compelling work (the kind that could transform the trajectory of art, or affect real social change) is left behind. Critics are coining terms like ‘Zombie Formalism’ … and ‘Zombie Figuration’ … in response to the sterility and stultifying sameness of much contemporary work. It’s as if artists were absorbing online algorithms into their bloodstreams. This empty, safe sensibility riffs and rehashes a vacuous culture, generating a perpetual cycle of well-branded insignificance.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
Comments are welcome!
Q: What kind of reactions do you get from spectators at your exhibitions? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
A group exhibition in New Jersey
A: Reactions to my work run the gamut – from dopey comments like, “I’m scared!” to “How in the world is such beauty and profundity possible to achieve using only soft pastel on a piece of sandpaper!”
I’m sure most artists can say the same. We can only hope that our work finds its way to an audience that has the eyes, heart, and mind to understand, to appreciate on a deep level the decades of devotion, sacrifice, and hard work that go into creating works of art.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Many of the world’s cultures have a mask tradition. Is there something special about Bolivian masks that first attracted you to them?
Bolivian Carnival Mask
A: My subject matter emerges directly from my travels. I visited Bolivia in 2017. What I especially liked then – and now – about Bolivian Carnival masks, is that they include additional textures – feathers, fur, costume jewelry, sequins, fabric, etc. that add to their physical presence. Masks from most of the other countries I’ve visited tend to be made of wood and/or paper mache and nothing else. In my view such masks are not as dramatic nor do they offer much expressive potential. They feel dead. They lack a certain “soulfulness.”
Furthermore, textures are challenging to render in soft pastel. For more than three decades I have been striving to improve my pastel techniques. By now I have a vast repertoire from which to select. As was true in my earlier series, with “Bolivianos” an important personal goal is to keep adding to the repertoire.
It takes months to create a pastel painting, which means I need masks that will hold my attention every day over the course of three or four months. I never want to be bored in the studio. If I am bored while making the work, those feelings will be directly transferred and I will make a boring pastel painting, something I hope never to do! The masks need to have a really strong ‘presence.’ Then as I slowly make a pastel painting, one that is exciting to work on from start to finish, I can transform my subject into something surprising and powerful that has never existed before!
Comments are welcome!
Q: How has the use of photography in your work changed over the decades?
New York, NY
A: From the beginning in the mid-1980s I used photographs as reference material. My late husband, Bryan, would shoot 4” x 5” negatives of my elaborate setups using his Toyo-Omega view camera. In this respect Bryan was an integral part of my creative process as I developed the “Domestic Threats” pastel paintings. At that time I rarely picked up a camera, except to capture memories of our travels.
After Bryan was killed on 9/11, I inherited his extensive camera collection – old Nikons, Leicas, Graphlex cameras, and more. I wanted and needed to learn how to use them. Starting 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 chromogenic prints in the darkroom.
Along the way I discovered that the sense of composition and color I had developed over many years as a painter translated well into photography. The camera was just another medium with which to express my ideas. Surprisingly, in 2009 I had my first solo photography exhibition at a gallery in New York. Bryan would have been so proud!
For several years now my camera of choice has been a 12.9” iPad Pro. It’s main advantage is that the large screen let’s me see every detail as I compose my photographs. I think of it as a portable, lightweight, and easy-to-use 8 x 10 view camera. My iPad is always with me when I travel and as I walk around exploring New York City.
It is a wonderful thing to be both a painter and a photographer! While pastel painting will always be my first love, photography has distinct advantages over my studio practice. Pastel paintings are labor-intensive, requiring months of painstaking work. Photography’s main advantage is speed. Photographs – from the initial impulse to hanging a print on a wall – can be made in minutes. Photography is instant gratification, allowing me to explore ideas much easier and faster than I ever could as a painter. Perhaps most importantly, composing photographs keeps my eye sharp whenever I am away from the studio. I credit photography as an important factor in the overall evolution of my work.
Comments are welcome!
Q: It must be tricky moving pastel paintings from your New York studio to your framer in Virginia. Can you explain what’s involved? (Question from Ni Zhu via Instagram)
“Impresario” partially boxed for transport to Virginia
A: Well, I have been working with the same framer for three decades so I am used to the process.
Once my photographer photographs a finished, unframed piece, I carefully remove it from the 60” x 40” piece of foam core to which it has been attached (with bulldog clips) during the months I worked on it. I carefully slide the painting into a large covered box for transport. Sometimes I photograph it in the box before I put the cover on (see above).
My studio is in a busy part of Manhattan where only commercial vehicles are allowed to park, except on Sundays. Early on a Sunday morning, I pick up my 1993 Ford F-150 truck from Pier 40 (a parking garage on the Hudson River at the end of Houston Street) and drive to my building’s freight elevator. I try to park relatively close by. On Sundays the gate to the freight elevator is closed and locked so I enter the building around the corner via the main entrance. I unlock my studio, retrieve the boxed painting, bring it to the freight elevator, and buzz for the operator. He answers and I bring the painting down to my truck. Then I load it into the back of my truck for transport to my apartment.
I drive downtown to the West Village, where I live, and double park my truck. (It’s generally impossible to park on my block). I hurry to unload the painting, bring it into my building, and up to my apartment, all the while hoping I do not get a parking ticket. The painting will be stored in my apartment, away from extreme cold or heat, until I’m ready to drive to Virginia. On the day I go to Virginia, I load it back into my truck. Then I make the roughly 5-hour drive south.
Who ever said being an artist is easy was lying!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 551
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 creative process is a philosophical search, shaped by matters of practice and procedure that extend from the first touch of the artist’s pencil, brush, or chisel to the final decisions about what constitutes completeness.
Stylistic particularism – the decision as to what kind of abstract or representational artist you’re going to be – shapes, deepens, and extends the artist’s imaginative powers. Most artists who work for many years see their style evolve, sometimes dramatically. In the 1930s and 1940s Giacometti, who had first been admired for Surrealist sculptures in which representational elements are set in essentially abstract structures, found himself increasingly focused on the direct observation of the human figure. What by the mid-1940s could look like a wholesale transformation of his artistic language was the result of individual decisions all of which, during Giacometti’s career of nearly five decades, interlocked. They reinforced one another. They added up.
Between Abstraction and Representation by Jed Perl in The New York Review of Books, November 24, 2022
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 
Q: What kind of reactions do you get from spectators at your exhibitions? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)
Jan 18
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
A: Reactions to my work run the gamut – from dopey comments like, “I’m scared!” to “How in the world is it possible to achieve such beauty and profundity using only soft pastel on a piece of sandpaper!” I’m sure most artists can say the same. We can only hope that our work finds its way to an audience that has the eyes, heart, and mind to understand, to appreciate on a deep level the decades of devotion, sacrifice, and hard work that go into creating works of art.
Comments are welcome!
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Posted in 2025, 2025, Exhibitions, New York, NY
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