Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 722
Barbara attending Carnival in Oruro, Bolivia!
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
One of the most insidious kinds of pressure to which an artist can succumb is the pressure to be accessible. Well-meaning advisors may tell you that x is acceptable, marketable, popular and wealthy. But if you alter your work to be more x-ish, people will spot it as inauthentic; it will not be heartfelt because it does not originate in your own being. By all means develop and revise your work to communicate more and more clearly; but if you alter one word in order to please some imagined market “out there,” the integrity and originality of everything you do is at risk. You get off the sure base of what you really know and are. Whereas if you create your own material in your own way, developing art work that is more and more authentically yours, people will spot it as genuine. In resisting the temptation to accessibility, you are creating a genuine space and living in it.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Q: How do you think your recent trip to Bolivia will affect your work?
Reference photo from my trip to Bolivia
A: I have been back in the United States for one month and I know from past trips that there is always a long gestation period as I reflect on colorful new experiences, new sights, sounds, etc. My three and a half-weeks in Bolivia were non-stop, intense, and just full of so many high points. Bolivia is a fascinating country with profound cultural riches, and exceptionally warm and welcoming people. I experienced new friendships and events that were way beyond anything I could have imagined. In short, there’s a lot to process!
In the immediate aftermath, back in the studio I am deliberately selecting more vibrant colors and bumping up the contrast and drama in the painting on my easel (“Gatecrasher”) as I attempt to reflect some of what I saw and experienced in Oruro during Carnaval. I have begun to plan a pastel painting based on the mask pictured above, which I photographed in La Paz. We shall see what new work is created over the coming months and years. For now, it’s exciting to be reenergized and to have new subject matter with which to work. And, at this early date, I can barely conceive what our new Bolivia documentary will be like!
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Pearls from artists* # 635
Bourges, France
*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 we focus on the future, we do one of three things. We fantasize, which involves big dreams that are mostly for fun and entertainment; we dwell, which involves focusing on all the bad stuff that might happen – this was the official pastime of my hometown – or we hope, which involves envisioning the future while recognizing the inevitability of challenges. Interestingly, more hopeful people anticipate setbacks along the way and work to remove them. And yet I always imagined that hopeful and optimistic people are just born that way…
The Book of Hope: A survival Guide for Trying Times, Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson
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Pearls from artists* # 542
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Observing these objects and imagining their history broadened my perspective. In China, we were still living in a culturally impoverished era, but art had not abandoned us – its roots were deeply planted in the weathered soil. The stubborn survival of this indigenous artistic tradition demonstrated that our narrow-minded authoritarian state would never be able to remake our culture in its own image. From then on, when I wasn’t spending time with my parents, I was immersing myself in the world of antiques. The dealers found me perplexing, for I followed no prevailing tastes or conventional wisdom. Instead I was taken with obscure objects, and made a point of buying things that seemed to have little or no value; my hungry spirit was nourished as I imagined the stories lurking behind each piece. The observations and insights that came to me from the distant past spurred me on to make art of my own.
– Ai Weiwei in 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
This is exactly my experience with the folk art I collect!
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Q: What inspires you to start your next painting? (Question from Nancy Nikkal)
A: For my current series, “Bolivianos,” I am using as source/reference material c-prints composed at a La Paz museum in 2017. I began the series by picking my favorite from this group of photos (“The Champ” and later, “Avenger”) before continuing with others selected for prosaic reasons such as I like some aspect of the photo, to push my technical skills by figuring out how to render some item in pastel, to challenge myself to make a pastel painting that is more exciting than the photo, etc. I like to think I have mostly succeeded.
At this time I am running low on images and have not yet imagined what comes next. Do I travel to La Paz again in 2021 to capture new photos? This series was a surprise gift so I am reluctant to deliberately chase after it knowing that ‘lightning never strikes twice.’ Will travel even be possible this year with Covid-19? These are questions I am wrestling with now.
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Q: What has been your biggest challenge so far?
“Us and Them,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 47″ x 38″ image, 60″ x 50″ framed
A: On September 11, 2001, my husband Bryan, a high-ranking federal government employee, a brilliant economist (with an IQ of 180 he is the smartest man I have ever known) and a budget analyst at the Pentagon, was en route to Monterrey, CA to give his monthly guest lecture for an economics class at the Naval Postgraduate College. He had the horrible misfortune of flying out of Dulles Airport and boarding the plane that was high-jacked and crashed into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. Losing Bryan was the biggest shock of my life and devastating in every possible way.
The following summer I was ready to – I HAD to – get back to work. Learning about photography and pastel painting became avenues to my well-being. I use reference photos for my paintings, so my first challenge was to learn how to use Bryan’s 4 x 5 view camera (Bryan always took these reference photos for me).
In July 2002 I enrolled in a one-week view camera workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York. Much to my surprise, I had already acquired substantial technical knowledge from watching Bryan. Still, after the initial workshop, I threw myself into this new medium and continued studying photography at ICP for several years. I began with Photography I and enrolled in many more classes until I gradually learned how to use Bryan’s extensive camera collection, to properly light my setups, and to print large chromogenic photographs in a darkroom.
In October 2009 it was very gratifying to have my first solo photography exhibition with HP Garcia in New York. Please see http://barbararachko.art/images/PDFS/ BarbaraRachko-HPGargia.pdf. I vividly remember tearing up at the opening as I imagined Bryan looking down at me with his beautiful smile, beaming as he surely would have, so proud of me for having become a respected photographer.
Continuing to make art had seemed an impossibility after Bryan’s death. However, the first large pastel painting that I created using a self-made reference photograph proved my life’s work could continue. The title of that painting, “She Embraced It and Grew Stronger,” is certainly autobiographical. “She” is me, and “it” means continuing on without Bryan and living life for both of us.
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Q: If you knew that you would never sell another pastel painting, would you still make them?
Preliminary sketch and photo
A: This is an interesting question to ponder in August when the art world is on vacation.
Certainly I would continue (reread my blog post of July 25th), but I wouldn’t bother to make them if one unrelated thing were true: that I knew beforehand what they would look like. Then the process just wouldn’t be very interesting.
Each pastel painting is an exploration, a journey with a point of departure. My reference photo and preliminary sketch serve as guides, but creating a painting is like making a voyage with only the roughest of maps. As I work, new possibilities open up that take the painting – and me – to places that could not have been imagined.
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Pearls from artists* # 143
“Intruder,” 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.
Artists and designers have the capacity to generate something from deep inside ourselves to live outside of ourselves. By residing in the experiential and the physical, and by developing the “hands on” as a portal of intelligent learning, we confirm the mind as maker and making as a state of mindfulness. We demonstrate how artists and designers are hosts for enduring creative discovery that is self-initiated and actively engaged. In short, artists and designers manifest what has not existed previously – in many cases, what has never even been imagined.
Rosanne Somerson in The Art of Critical Making: Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice, Rosanne Somerson and Mara L. Hermano, editors
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