Blog Archives
Q: What qualities do you think mark the highest artistic achievement?
Barbara’s studio
A: If I may speak in the most general terms, several qualities come to mind that, for me, mark real artistic achievement:
- firm artistic control that allows the artist to create works that simultaneously demonstrate formal coherence while responding to inner necessity
- the creation of new forms and techniques that are adapted to expressing the artist’s highly personal vision
- an authentic and balanced fusion of form, method, and idea
- using material from one’s own idiosyncratic experiences and subtly transforming it in a personal inimitable way during the creative process
- the meaning of the thing created is rigorously subordinated to its design, which once established, generates its own internal principles of harmony and coherence
Comments are welcome!
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.
Comments are welcome!
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