Blog Archives
Q: How do you decide when a pastel painting is finished?
“Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” in progress
A: During the months that it takes to create a pastel painting, I search for arresting colors that work well together. The goal is to make a painting that I have never seen before and that leads the viewer’s eyes around in interesting ways. To do this 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 just six or seven layers of black Rembrandt pastel. The more realistic parts of a pastel painting take many more applications. In general, details always take plenty of time to refine and 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 some of the finished surfaces achieve a texture akin to velvet. My technique involves blending each layer with my fingers, pushing the pastel deep into the tooth of the sandpaper, and mixing new colors directly on the paper. Fortunately, the sandpaper holds plenty of pigment so I am able to include lots of details.
Before I pronounce a pastel painting finished, I let it sit against a wall in my studio for a few days so I can look at it later with fresh eyes. I consider a piece done when it is as good as I can make it, when adding or subtracting something would diminish what is there. Always, I try to push myself and my materials to their limits, using them in new and unexpected ways.
Comments are welcome.
Q: How do you decide when a pastel painting is finished?
Signing “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”
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 continually refining and 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.
Q: Why do you have so many pastels?
Barbara’s Studio
A: Our eyes can see infinitely more colors than the relative few that are made into pastels. When I layer pigments onto the sandpaper substrate, I mix new colors directly on the paper. The short answer is, I need lots of pastels so that I can make new colors.
I have been working exclusively with soft pastel for 40 years. Whenever I feel myself getting into a rut in how I select and use my colors, I look around for new materials to try. Fortunately, new brands of soft pastels are continually coming onto the market. There are pastels that are handmade by artists – I love discovering these – and new colors manufactured by well-known pastel companies. Some sticks of soft pastel are oily, some are buttery, some more powdery, some crumble easily, some are more durable. Each one feels distinct in my hand.
Furthermore, they each have unique mixing properties. It’s an under-appreciated science that I stumbled upon (or maybe I invented it, I’m not sure since I cannot know how other pastel painters work). In this respect soft pastel is very different from other paint media. Oil painters, for example, need only a few tubes of paint to make any color in the world. I don’t go in much for studying color theory as a formal discipline. If you want to really understand and learn how to use color, try soft pastel and spend 10,000+ hours (the amount of time Malcolm Gladwell says, in his book, “Outliers,” that it takes to master a skill) figuring it all out for yourself!
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.
Q: Why do you have so many pastels?
Barbara’s Studio
A: Our eyes can see infinitely more colors than the relative few that are made into pastels. When I layer pigments onto the sandpaper substrate, I mix new colors directly on the painting. This has the result of making many of my colors unrepeatable. The short answer is, I need lots of pastels so that I can mix new colors.
I have been working exclusively with soft pastel for nearly 40 years. Each pastel stick has unique mixing properties that depend on what was used as a binder to hold the dry pigment together. Some soft pastels are oily, some are buttery, some are powdery, some crumble easily, some are harder. Each one feels slightly different when I apply it to the sandpaper.
Soft pastel is distinct among paint media. Oil painters need only a few tubes of paint to make any number of colors, but pastels are not easily combined to form new colors. I learned how to mix colors by experimenting. In the process I developed a personal and unique science of color-mixing and blending. This is one of the factors that makes my work so recognizable and sets it apart from that of other pastel painters.
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: You seem very disciplined. Do you ever have a day when you just can’t get excited about going to the studio to work?
Signing “Narcissist”
A: That happens occasionally, but I usually still go to the studio to work. You know the expression, “99% of life is just showing up”? Well, of course I have to show up at my studio to accomplish anything so I still try to keep fairly regular studio hours – 6 to 7 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. And that’s not to mention all the other work – answering email, checking social media, writing blog posts, etc. – which I tend to do at lunchtime, in the evenings, and on my days off from the studio.
When you are an artist there is always work to do and for some of it, no one else can do it because no one else knows the work from the inside the way the maker does. I like what Twyla Tharp says in her book, “The Creative Habit.” In order to progress an artist needs good work habits that become a daily routine. And Chuck Close used to say, “Inspiration is for amateurs,” meaning a professional works whether she’s in the mood or not. I completely agree so I keep working and slowly moving ahead.
As Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to a friend:
We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination. A few days ago I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness. But my patience and faith did not fail me, and today I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write today will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it.
Quoted in Eric Maisel’s A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 588
Screen shot from “Barbara Rachko: True Grit” Photo: Jennifer Cox
*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 structure of the hand is not… “just anything;” the fingers have certain characteristic relationships, certain ranges of relative movement, certain kinds of crossing, torquing, jumping, sliding, pressing, releasing movements that guide the music to come out a certain way. Graceful work uses those patterns and instinctively moves through them and out as we find ever-fresh combinations. The shape and size of the human hand brings powerful but subtle laws into every kind of art, craftsmanship, mechanical work, and into our ideas and feelings as well. There is a continuous dialogue between hand and instrument, hand and culture. Artwork is not thought up in consciousness and then, as a separate phase, executed by the hand. The hand surprises us, creates and solves problems on its own. Often enigmas that battle our brains are dealt with easily, unconsciously, by the hand.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* #561
*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 most powerful symbols draw profound reactions from us. The symbolic images in great art attract and fascinate us; they stir our souls and move us beyond what can be easily expressed; ‘their pregnant language cries out to us that they mean more than they say.’
The unconscious produces symbols as part of a natural process within us. These images emerge out of the context of our lived experience… Jung saw the meaning-making process as one that not only requires attendance to the real context of our lives and history, but also involves profound inner listening. It asks us to use our rational capacities, but also our feeling and imaginal ones.
Symbolic images redirect our psychic energy, bringing together conscious and unconscious material and producing the lessening of conflict. In this way, they activate a transcendent function within the psyche. We experience this as the discovery of personal meaning and healing. This transformation is not the result of formulaic operations, but rather is a dynamic process that requires our authentic and vulnerable participation. The process challenges the whole of who we are and requires deep moral effort. That the unconscious would produce moving, powerful compensatory symbols inside us at all points to a fact that our culture may not have fully grasped – that there is a force working within us which is always driving us towards healing growth and greater consciousness… Despite our suffering, the psyche is always ultimately seeking both a healthy homeostatic balance and our ever-unfolding growth and unique development.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 458
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
When I have painted a fine picture I have not given expression to a thought! That is what they say. What fools people are! They would strip painting of all its advantages. A writer has to say almost everything in order to make himself understood, but in painting it is as if some mysterious bridge were set up between the spirit of the persons in the picture and the beholder. The beholder sees figures, the external appearance of nature, but inwardly he meditates; the true thinking that is common to all men. Some give substance to it in writing, but in so doing they lose the subtle essence. Hence, grosser minds are more easily moved by writers than by painters or musicians. The art of the painter is all the nearer to man’s heart because it seems to be more material. In painting, as in external nature, proper justice is done to what is finite and to what is infinite, in other words, to what the soul finds inwardly moving in objects that are known through the senses alone.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix edited by Hubert Wellington
Comments are welcome!
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