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Q: As you reflect on your overall art career beginning with your art education, what major event stands out as an important sign that you were headed in the right direction?
“His Mortal Enemy Was Poised Ready to Strike,” soft pastel on sandpaper
A: In 1989 I left a career in the Navy to pursue life as a full-time professional artist. In July 1996 Bryan and I were traveling in Mexico. Something told me to check the phone messages at our Virginia house so I did.
There was a message from Mia Kim, the director of Brewster Arts Ltd. on West 57th Street in Manhattan, requesting a dozen large pastel paintings for a two-person exhibition in October, just three months away!
At the time I was still living in Alexandria, Virginia so exhibiting in Manhattan – let alone securing prestigious gallery representation – seemed a far-off dream. Yes, I had sent Mia slides, but she had not seen my work in person. She first saw my “Domestic Threats” pastel paintings when I delivered them to the gallery for exhibition. The show was called “Monkey Business.”
Brewster Arts was an elegant New York gallery that specialized in Latin American Art. There was just one other non-Latina artist that Mia represented, Leonora Carrington, whom I met that October at my opening. I remember Mia introducing me and declaring to the entire crowd, “Barbara has the SOUL of a Latina.” I’ve always loved that. It was the first time I realized I was really on my way!
Brewster Arts Ltd. continued to represent my work until the gallery closed some years later.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 354
“Epiphany,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
*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 earlier work had taught me that artistic activity is a form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined. A person who paints, writes, composes, dances, I felt compelled to say, thinks with his senses. This union of perception and thought turned out to be not merely a specialty of the arts. A review of what is known about perception, and especially about sight, made me realize that the remarkable mechanisms by which the senses understand the environment are all but identical with the operations described by the psychology of thinking. Inversely, there was much evidence that truly productive thinking in whatever area of cognition takes place in the realm of imagery. This similarity of what the mind does in the arts and what it does elsewhere suggested taking a new look at the long-standing complaint about the isolation and neglect of the arts in society and education. Perhaps the real problem was more fundamental: a split between sense and thought, which caused various deficiency diseases in modern man.
Rudolph Arnheim in Visual Thinking
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 287
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 go back and introduce into all the schools art, to cut down on sports but bring arts, philosophy back into all educational systems,” he said. “And that’s what’s being cut everywhere. And I think that’s one of the sad and tragic parts of where we are. Education is the resistance to everything that is bad today.”
Jonas Mekas quoted in Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person, by John Leland, The New York Times, Dec. 29, 2017.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 206
“Provocateur,” 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.
And a career in higher education and medicine has taught me that creativity – whether in the sciences, arts or humanities – fosters controversy. We neither seek nor avoid controversy – we anticipate it and welcome the opportunity to explain the creative choices we make. We must take risks. We must be involved in the vital issues facing the world.
David J. Skorton, Director of the Smithsonian Institution in “What Do We Value?” Museum, May/June 2016
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you decide how much to charge for your paintings?
Barbara’s studio
A: What to charge for my work is a complex question. The prices of my pastel paintings take into account many tangible and intangible factors. Here are a few:
Sales history.
My thirty-year-long exhibition history.
The costs of maintaining a studio in New York. My overhead goes up annually, but I do not raise prices every year to offset these expenses.
The countless hours of labor, cost of art materials, framing, photography, transportation, foreign travel, etc. that go into creating a painting.
Costs for marketing, social media, advertising, website design and upkeep, ongoing education, etc.
Somewhat less quantifiable factors such as my reputation as an artist, the real demand for my work, goodwill, the fact that I work full-time as a professional artist, etc.
Comments are welcome!
Q: At the end of last Saturday’s (September 28th) post you mentioned something called, “Esala Perahera.” What is that?
Waiting for the Perahera to start, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Mending an elephant’s headdress, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Preparations – planning what to do in case an elephant charges
Flame throwers watching a man balancing on one stilt
First elephant in the procession
Drummers, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Three elephants, Kandy, Sri Lanka
A single “tusker,” Kandy, Sri Lanka
Esala Perahera, Kandy, Sri Lanka
After the festival
A: My trip to Sri Lanka was timed so that I could observe it first hand. Here is a description from the “Insight Guide to Sri Lanka:”
The lunar month of Esala is a month for festivals and peraheras all around the island. Easily the finest and the most famous is the Esala Perahera held at Kandy over the ten days leading up to the Esala Poya (full moon) day (late July or early August). The festival dates back to ancient Anuradhapura, when the Tooth Relic (of the Buddha) was taken through the city in procession, and the pattern continues to this day, with the relic carried at the head of an enormous procession which winds its way round and round the city by night. The perahera becomes gradually longer and more lavish over the 10 days of the festival, until by the final night it has swollen to include a cast of hundreds of elephants and thousands of dancers, drummers, fire-eaters, acrobats, and many others – an extraordinary sight without parallel anywhere else in Sri Lanka, if not the whole of Asia.
I would go further and add that the Esala Perahera is one of the world’s great festivals. Who could ever imagine such a spectacle? It may be a cliché to say it, but travel is ultimately the best education.
Comments are welcome!
Q: It is well known that you gain inspiration from foreign travel. Has anyone ever accused you of stealing their culture?
Feb 9
Posted by barbararachkoscoloreddust
The Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca
A: Yes, a few people have done so via comments on Facebook. It came as a shock.
The logic of such an accusation presumes ownership. I don’t believe any person has a claim to owning culture.
Travel is arguably the best education there is. My travels around the world, supplemented with lots of research once I return home, are an important part of my creative process. This is how I develop ideas to forge a way ahead. It is difficult and solitary work.
Every artist is tasked with remaining open to influences – however, wherever, and whenever they appear. Somewhat late in life, travel as a source of inspiration found ME. And it has been a blessing!
People around the world have become fans. Many send messages of thanks saying they are proud that some aspect of their country’s culture has inspired my work. I am always grateful and touched to know this.
Comments are welcome!
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Posted in An Artist's Life, Bolivia, Creative Process, Inspiration, Studio, The West Village, Working methods
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