Blog Archives
Q: How many pastel paintings do you have in progress now?
Work in progress
A: Making pastel-on-sandpaper paintings is a slow and meticulous process. I work full-time in my studio so that in a good year I can produce five finished pieces. Typically two are in progress at a time so that I can switch off when problems develop.
A downside to looking at a painting for months is that there comes a point when I can’t see the flaws any more. Then it’s definitely time to take a break.
When I put a painting that has been resting back onto my easel, I see it with fresh eyes again. Areas that need work immediately stand out. Problem areas become easily resolvable because I have continued to think about them while the painting was out of my sight.
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Pearls from artists* # 174
Barbara’s studio, Photo: Marianne Barcellona
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
If you are older, trust that the world has been educating you all along. You already know so much more than you think you know. You are not finished; you are merely ready. After a certain age, no matter how you’ve been spending your time, you have very likely earned a doctorate in living. If you’re still here – if you have survived this long – it is because you know things. We need you to reveal to us what you know, what you have learned, what you have seen and felt. If you are older, chances are strong that you may already possess absolutely everything you need to possess in order to live a more creative life – except the confidence to actually do your work. But we need you to do your work.
Whether you are young or old, we need your work in order to enrich and inform our own lives.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Q: What was the first painting you ever sold?
“Bryan’s Ph.D.”, 11″ x 13 1/2″, soft pastel on sandpaper
A: I believe my first sale was “Bryan’s Ph.D.” I made it in 1990 as one of several small paintings created to improve my skills at rendering human hands in pastel. I had recently left the Navy and was building a career as a portrait artist. Bryan, my late husband, was often my model for these studies, not only because it was convenient, but because he had such beautiful hands.
In 1990 Bryan was working on his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Maryland. In this painting he is drawing a diagram that illustrates a theoretical point about “international public goods,” the subject of his research. He was sitting in an old wooden rocking chair in our backyard in Alexandria, VA. I still own the chair and the house. I photographed his hands close-up and then created the painting. I don’t remember which of Bryan’s cameras I used, but it was one that took 35 mm film; perhaps his Nikon F-2. Somewhere I must still have the negative and the original reference photo.
“Bryan’s Ph.D.” is 11″ x 13 1/2″ and it sold for $500 at a monthly juried exhibition at The Art League in Alexandria. I have not seen it since 1990. (Above is a photograph of “Bryan’s Ph.D.” from my portfolio book).
Not long ago the owner contacted me, explaining that she had received the painting as a gift from her now ex-husband. She was selling it because it evoked bitter memories of her divorce. Her phone call was prompted by uncertainty about the painting’s value now. She had a likely buyer and needed to know what price to charge.
I was saddened because I have so many beautiful memories of this particular painting and of an idyllic time in my life with Bryan. He was on a leave of absence from the Pentagon to work on his dissertation, while I was finished with active duty. At last I was a full time artist, busily working in the spare bedroom that we had turned into my first studio.
My conversation with the owner was a reminder that once paintings are let out into the world, they take on associations that have nothing to do with the personal circumstances surrounding their creation. In short, what an artist creates solely out of love, stands a good chance of not being loved or appreciated by others. This is one reason to only sell my work to people I select personally. I ended the telephone conversation hoping that “Bryan’s Ph.D.” fares better in its new home.
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Q: Would you say there is a unifying quality to all of the work you have produced in the last thirty years?
Barbara’s portfolio book
A: Yes, I can think of several. Whether making pastel paintings or printing photographs in the darkroom, I have always been concerned with quality and craftsmanship and never pronounce a work finished until it is the best thing I can make.
Although I started out as a maker of photorealist portraits in pastel, for twenty-odd years I have worked with Mexican folk art as my primary subject matter, treating these objects very differently in three separate series: “Black Paintings,” “Domestic Threats,” and “Gods and Monsters.” The first two are pastel-on-sandpaper paintings while the last is comprised of chromogenic photographs (c-prints). A few years ago I also started making “Teleidoscopes” using an iPad app to photograph my Mexican and Guatemalan folk art collection. This last one is just for fun; I do not offer them for sale.
Soft pastel is my first love and the two series of pastel paintings are my best-known work. My technique for using pastel continues to evolve in intriguing ways. I doubt I can ever learn all there is to know not only about color, but also about this medium. Pastel is endlessly fascinating, which is why I have never wanted to switch to anything else.
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Pearls from artists* # 160
“A Promise, Meant to be Broken,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
* 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 get asked what one piece of advice I have for young photographers, this is what I tell them: if you are working on a project, and you’re thinking maybe it’s time to put it out into the world, make sure you have already started your next body of work. Not just started, either; you should be well along on it. You will know that the first project is finished when you find yourself joylessly going through the motions to eke out a few more pictures while, like a forbidden lover, the new ones call seductively to you. This new lover should be irresistible, and when it calls, you will be in its urgent thrall, making the work of your heart.
Sally Mann in Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
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Pearls from artists* # 141
Painting, subject, reference photo
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
It would be very interesting to record photographically not the stages of a painting, but its metamorphoses. One would see perhaps by what course a mind finds its way towards the crystallization of its dream. But what is really very curious is to see that the picture does not change basically, that the initial vision remains almost intact in spite of appearances. I see often a light and dark, when I have put them in my picture, I do everything I can to ‘break them up,’ in adding a color that creates a counter effect. I perceive, when this work is photographed, that which I have introduced to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that after all the photographic image corresponds to my first vision, before the occurrence of the transformation brought about by my will.
The picture is not thought out and determined beforehand, rather while it is being made it follows the mobility of thought. Finished, it changes further, according to the condition of him who looks at it. A picture lives its life like a living creature, undergoing the changes that daily life imposes on us. That is natural, since a picture lives only through him who looks at it.
Christian Zervos: Conversation with Picasso in The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin
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Q: What do you do when you are between paintings?
Work in progress
A: I would be at loose ends if I finished a pastel painting and didn’t have another one immediately available to work on. It’s one reason I always have two paintings in progress. Another is that when I get stuck on some technical problem, I can switch to the other painting. Works in progress tend to interact and play off of each other. As I am working on a second painting, solutions to problems I had on the first quickly become apparent.
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Q: How do you know when a series has ended?
“A Promise, Meant to be Broken,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
A: I suppose it’s when there is nothing left to say within a particular body of work. The urgency to add something I haven’t tried vanishes. Usually I can’t even think of anything I haven’t tried.
I knew with certainty that the “Domestic Threats” series was finished while “A Promise Meant to be Broken” was still on my easel. It’s no accident that I included a self-portrait. This painting was my way of saying good-bye to an important body of work – literally turning my back on it – and summing up where the work had taken me.
For artists each series is a creative journey with a beginning, a middle, and an end. At a certain point it’s over. Then you build on what you’ve accomplished and move on to create something new. The connection between new work and old may not always be obvious, but one thing is certain: all the previous work laid the groundwork for what you make today.
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Q: How important is the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think about who will enjoy your Art when you conceive it?
Painting, subject, reference photo
A: I can’t say that I think at all about audience reaction while I’m creating a painting in my studio. Although, of course I want people to respond favorably to the work.
Generally, I’m thinking about technical problems – making something that is exciting to look at, well-composed, vibrant, up to my exacting standards, etc. When I finish a painting, it is the best thing I am capable of making at that moment in time.
I think about a painting and look at it for so long and with such intensity, that it could hardly have turned out any differently. There is an inevitability to the whole lengthy process that goes all the way back to when I first laid eyes on the folk art figures in a dusty shop in a third world country. Looking at a newly-finished painting on my easel I often think, “Of course! I was drawn to this figure so that it could serve this unique function in this painting.”
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Q: You have been a working artist for nearly thirty years. Considering your entire body of work, is there any particular painting that you love or hate?
Barbara’s studio
A: With very few exceptions, I generally love all of my paintings equally. I do not hate any of them. Each was the best I could make at that particular stage in my development as an artist and as a person. I am a perfectionist with high standards – this is my life’s work. I am devoted to becoming the best artist I can be. I have never pronounced a work “finished” until it is the absolute best that I can make.
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