Blog Archives
Q: Can you tell us about the different series of work you have created and what they embody?
Barbara’s studio with work in progress
A: The Black Paintings series of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings grew directly from an earlier series, Domestic Threats. While both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly-charged narratives, in the Black Paintings I replaced all background details of my actual setup (furniture, rugs, etc.) with lush black pastel. In this work the ‘actors’ are front and center.
While traveling in Bolivia two years ago, I visited a mask exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz. The masks were presented against black walls, spot-lit, and looked eerily like 3D versions of my Black Paintings. I immediately knew I had stumbled upon a gift. So far I have completed nine pastel paintings in the Bolivianos series. One is awaiting finishing touches, one is in progress now, and I am planning the next one.
All of my pastel paintings are an example of a style called “contemporary conceptual realism” in which things are not quite as innocent as they seem. In this sense each painting is a kind of Trojan horse. There is plenty of backstory to my images, although I usually prefer not to over-explain them. Some mystery must always remain in art.
The world I depict is that of the imagination and this realm owes little debt to the natural world. I recently gave an art talk where I was reminded how fascinating it is to learn how others respond to my work. As New York art critic Gerrit Henry once remarked, “What we bring to a Rachko… we get back, bountifully.”
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Q: What do you see when you look back at your early efforts?
“Myth Meets Dream,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 47″ x 38,” 1993
A: I see continuity in subject matter and in medium, surely. For thirty-three years I have been inspired by foreign travel and research. In addition, I remain devoted to pushing the limits of what soft pastel can do and to promoting its merits as a fine art medium.
Here and there I see details I would render differently now; not exactly mistakes, but things that maybe could be done better. Fortunately, I think, all of my work is framed behind glass or plexiglas, making it extremely difficult to attempt revisions.
Perhaps most important of all, I see the long personal road that has advanced my work to its present state. Each gain has been hard-fought.
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue working on “Acolytes,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38” x 58.” It’s slow going at this stage as I refine my drawing and bring everything to a high state of finish. My work is all about details.
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Q: How can you tell with certainty when a pastel painting is finished?
“Poker Face,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
A: For me a work is finished when to add or subtract some element causes the composition to diminish or somehow weaken. It’s mostly a matter of where I want viewers to look and how I decide to lead their eyes around a painting.
I work on each piece for several months so that by the time it’s nearly done, I can no longer see flaws. I put it aside for a week or two. Then I pull it out again, turn it upside down, and any details that need improving become obvious. Once I fix them, I know the painting is finally finished and ready to be signed, photographed, and delivered to my framer.
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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.
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am in the very early stages of a large pastel painting. I have never painted any of these figures before and they originated in different parts of the world. The bird (left) is from the Brooklyn Museum’s store, although it was hand carved in Guatemala. The standing figure is carved wood with beautiful painted details. It was a lucky find on a trip to Panajachel, Guatemala. The armadillo (red and grey) was made by one of my favorite Mexican folk artists (now deceased) and I believe it’s one of the last pieces he completed. It is a papier mâché figure that I found in a small shop in Mexico City. The figure on the upper right is a wooden mask bought from a talkative and talented artist at a hotel in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It depicts nagas (cobras), although you can’t tell that yet in the painting.
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Q: You have written about how you came to your current subject matter, but what led you away from photorealism to work that while not exactly abstract, leans more in that direction?
Barbara’s studio
A: Once I had achieved a high degree of technical facility with soft pastel, there was not much more to be gained from copying reality. Cameras do an excellent job of that so what would be the point?
Ultimately, all art lies in following an experience through to the end. Art is in the choices one makes. A visual artist’s private decisions about what to include and what to leave out become her unique inimitable style. Years ago I made a conscious decision to abandon photorealism. Since then I have been on a journey to work more from imagination and direct experience and less from physical reality.
It’s funny. I have always worked from photographs. Because I have a strong work ethic and substantial technical skill, I often feel like a slacker if I do not put in all the details that I see in the reference photo. That’s why the journey has been so slow, I think, as I convince myself it’s really ok to omit more and more details.
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Pearls from artists* # 78
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.
To me, openings are never what you want them to be. The excitement, relief, anxiety, and anticipation are too much to process. There’s no apotheosis, no pinnacle, no turning point. It’s not like theater, where at the end of a performance people get up and applaud.
Nothing gets created at an opening. Nothing of artistic merit takes place. All of that important stuff happens in the studio, long before the exhibition, when you’re alone. For me, anyway, openings are something to get through, an ordeal to be endured. The bigger the event, the less I remember it. I pretty much walk in, and wherever I stop is where I stay. I paint a grin on my face so fixed that by the end of the evening my jaw is sore. I remember none of the conversations. I stand there shaking hands, blindly mouthing, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Then eventually April [Gornick, Fischl’s wife] collects me and we leave.
If, on the other hand, you were to ask me what I remember about making the paintings in a show, that’s a different story. Imagine touching something, stroking it, jostling it, caressing it, and as you’re doing this, you are creating it. How you touched it is how it came into existence. Unlike other pleasures, where the feelings fade quickly as details become blurred, with paintings you remember everything. Within the details are all the bumps and the friction, the memory of when the creative instinct flowed, when you were distracted or lazy or working too hard. It’s all there on the canvas. When I look at my paintings again, years later, even, I remember it all – the victory laps and the scars.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
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Q: How would you describe your personal artistic style?
Barbara’a pastels
A: Regardless of what medium I am using, I am first and foremost a colorist. Everything I create is vibrant with color.
The Navy taught me to be organized, goal-oriented and focused, to love challenges, and in everything I do, to pay attention to the details. Trying to make it as an artist in New York is nothing BUT challenges, so these qualities serve me well, whether I am creating paintings, shooting and making photographs, or trying to understand the art business, keep up with social media, and manage all the tasks required of a busy artist with a New York studio, a business, and two residences to maintain. It’s a lot, but it forces me to continually learn and grow. As Helen Keller famously said, “Life is an adventure or it is nothing.”
These days I am rarely bored. I thoroughly enjoy spending long, solitary hours working to become a better artist. I am meticulous about craft and will not let work out of my studio until it is as good as I can make it. My creative process is more exciting than ever. It’s thrilling and energizing to continually push soft pastel to its limits and use it in ways that no other artist has done before!
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Q: How do you know when a pastel painting is finished?
“Big Wow,” soft pastel on sandpaper
A: During the several months that I work on a pastel painting, I search for the best, most eye-popping colors, as I build up and blend together as many as 25 to 30 layers of pigment. I am able to complete some areas, like the background, fairly easily – maybe with six or seven layers – but the more realistic parts take more applications because I am adding details. Details always take time to perfect. No matter how many pastel layers I apply, however, I never use fixatives. It is difficult to see this in reproductions of my work, but the finished surfaces achieve a texture akin to velvet. My technique involves blending each layer with my fingers, pushing pastel deep into the tooth of the sandpaper. The paper holds plenty of pigment and because the pastel doesn’t flake off, there is no need for fixatives.
I consider a given painting complete when it is as good as I can make it, when adding or subtracting anything would diminish what is there. I know my abilities and I know what each individual stick of pastel can do. I continually try to push myself and my materials to their limits.
Comments are welcome.
