Blog Archives
Q: You have worked with twenty-plus galleries during your career. Which ones do you consider the best?
“Myth Meets Dream,” 1993, soft pastel on sandpaper, the earliest painting that includes Mexican figures
A: Probably the most prestigious gallery that represented my work was Brewster Fine Arts on West 57th Street in Manhattan. Brewster was my first New York gallery. In the summer of 1996 I mailed the gallery a sheet of slides, as we did in those days. I was living in Virginia and had been a working artist for ten years. In July while traveling around Mexico, I decided to check the phone messages at home in Virginia. I was thrilled to receive an invitation from Mia Kim, the gallery director, to exhibit pastel paintings in October! And she had not yet even seen my work in person.
Beginning that fall, I gained representation with Brewster Fine Arts, an elegant gallery specializing in Latin American Masters like Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, and others. I am not Latina, of course, but I showed there due to my subject matter. At my October opening, I remember Mia declaring to the attendees, “Barbara has the soul of a Latina!” That night I met fellow gallery artist Leonora Carrington. She and I were the only non-Latina artists respresented. I knew I was on my way!
The gallery continued to present my work in group exhibitions and the staff gave brilliant talks about me and my creative process. For many years whenever I introduced myself to a new art aficionado, they already knew my work from having seen it at Brewster. I continued to be represented there until the gallery closed years later.
Also, Gallery Bergelli in Larkspur, CA did an excellent job of representing my work. I applied for one of their juried exhibitions, was accepted, and afterwards, they offered permanent representation. Soon they introduced me to one of my best collectors, with whom I am still friends.
I have worked with many galleries, some good, some not, for various reasons. Ours is an extremely tough business. Unfortunately, many of the best and formerly-great galleries are gone forever.
Comments are welcome!
Q: How long did it take you to discover the properties of pastel? (Liliana Mileo via facebook.com/BarbaraRachko/)
A charcoal self-portrait from 1988
A: After I moved to Alexandria, Virginia in the mid-1980s, I began taking classes at The Art League School. I was extremely unhappy with my career as a Navy Lieutenant. I worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and was searching for something more meaningful to do with my life.
I began with a basic drawing class and liked it. I enrolled in more classes and decided to spend two years working exclusively in black and white media, such as charcoal and graphite, before advancing to color. Fortunately, early on I found an excellent teacher in Lisa Semerad. I remain deeply grateful for the strong foundational drawing skills she imparted to me during this period.
After two years I tried water color and soon discovered it was not for me, a perfectionist who needs to refine my work. Then I tried etching and found it extremely tedious, the antithesis of instant gratification.
Finally I began studying soft pastel with Diane Tesler, another gifted teacher, and fell in love with this medium! At The Art League School I also completed a one-week workshop with Albert Handell, who introduced me to the archival sandpaper that I have been using ever since.
While I fell in love with pastel three decades ago, I continue to learn about its unique properties. I am pushing pastel to new heights as my techniques continually evolve. This is a lifetime journey of learning. I hope to never know all there is to know.
Comments are welcome! Ask anything and I may answer in a future blog post, as you’ve seen here with Liliana’s question.
Pearls from artists* # 385
Potosí, 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.
Sunday of Carnival, the parade begins. For a whole day of celebration in music and dance, people can express their hope and fears, revive their myths and escape to a reality far from everyday life.
Thousands of spectators arrive from different parts if Bolivia and other countries. Filling the streets, they straddle benches, window ledges, balconies, cats and eve hang from walls or roofs to witness the entrance of the Carnival. Thus is the magnificent parade when Carnival makes its official entry into Oruro. The comparsas (dance troupes) dance to music for20 blocks, nearly eight lies, to the Church of the Virgin of Socavón (Virgin of the Mine). Each tries to out do the next in the brilliance of their costumes, the energy of their dancing and the power of their music. All their efforts are dedicated to the Virgin whose shrine is found on the hill called Pie de Gallo.
If there are thousands of spectators, there are also thousands of dancers from the city and other parts of the country. Among the most remarkable are the Diablos and Morenos which count for eight of the 40 or 50 participating groups. Keeping in mind that the smallest troupes have between 30 and 50 embers and the largest between 200 and 300, it is possible to calculate the number of dancers and imagine the spectacle.
… Each dance recalls a particular aspect of life in the Andes. Lifted from different periods and places, the dances offer a rich interpretation of historical events, creating an imaginative mythology for Oruro.
… Carnival blends indigenous beliefs and rituals with those introduced by the Spaniards. Both systems of belief have undergone transformations, each making allowance for the other, either through necessity or familiarity. The Christianity fought from Europe becomes loaded with new meanings while the myths and customs of the Andes accommodate their language and creativity to the reality of their conquered world. The process can be seen as a struggle culminating in a ‘mestizaje’ or new cultural mix.
El Carnaval de Oruro by Manuel Vargas in Mascaras de los Andes Bolivianos, Editorial Quipus and Banco Mercantil
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 384
Overlooking Copacabana, Bolivia and Lake Titicaca
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Carnival in Oruro [Bolivia] is a glorious spectacle. It’s flash, pomp and brilliance can be enjoyed without understanding its long history and intricate mythologies. Still, the onlooker is left with a thousand questions that are not so easily answered. Behind the glitter of Carnival lie the history, the timeless myths and the distinct traditions of this mining community.
According to the Spanish writer Jean Laude, “The function of the mask is to reaffirm, at regular intervals, the truth and presence of myths in everyday life.” This suggests that masks should be studied in context, noting their association with the individual dancer and the history, myths and traditions of the community that produces them. The mask has to be animated within its ritual, comic or social role.
A first step in appreciating the masks is to understand something of the land and people that crafted them. Oruro is a mining city on the open Altiplano at 3,700 meters (12,144 ft.) above sea level. The sky appears a rarified blue, it is intensely cold and a constant wind lifts dust to the eyes. During the year no more than 125,000 people live in the city. Suddenly in the weeks of Carnival, the population doubles or triples.
Three languages, Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish are spoken in Oruro. Their use reflects an ancient pattern of conquest in the history of this land. It is said that the Urus, whose language is now almost lost, were the first inhabitants. In time they were dominated by the Aymara tribes. Later, Quechua was introduced as the Inca advanced their empire from Cuzco. Ultimately the Spanish arrived and founded the present city in 1601 to exploit rich mineral deposits found in the seven hills.
Today, descendants of the Urus live near Oruro around the shore of Lake Poopo. Elements of their distinctive culture remain but they have no wealth in comparison with the more dominant Aymara and Quechua who surround them. A further change came in the recent past because Oruro has acted as a magnet, attracting many people from the countryside to work in the mines.
On one side were the Urus, ancient owners of all the land which now only carries their name (Uro Uro = Oruro). On the other side were the miners, many of whom were Quechua and Aymara migrants. In the middle is “Carnival.”
El Carnaval de Oruro by Manuel Vargas in Mascaras de los Andes Bolivianos, Editorial Quipus and Banco Mercantil
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 192
“Dichotomy,” 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.
Interviewer: Do you have any unfinished poems that you look at occasionally?
T.S. Eliot: I haven’t much in that way, no. As a rule, with me an unfinished thing is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It’s better, if there’s something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it’s in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews 2nd Series, edited by George Plimpton and introduced by Van Wyck Brooks
Comments are welcome!
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
Comments are welcome!
Q: Would you speak about your first trip to Mexico?
With an amate tree at Chalcatzingo
A: In the early 90’s my late husband, Bryan, and I made our first trip to Oaxaca and to Mexico City. At the time I had become fascinated with the Mexican “Day of the Dead” celebrations so our trip was timed to see them firsthand. Along with busloads of other tourists, we visited several cemeteries in small Oaxacan towns. The indigenous people tending their ancestor’s graves were so dignified and so gracious, even with so many mostly-American tourists tromping around on a sacred night, that I couldn’t help being taken with these beautiful people and their beliefs. From Oaxaca we traveled to Mexico City, where again I was entranced, but this time by the rich and ancient history. On that first trip to Mexico we visited the National Museum of Anthropology, where I was introduced to the fascinating story of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations (it is still one of my favorite museums in the world); the ancient city of Teotihuacan, which the Aztecs discovered as an abandoned city and then occupied as their own; and the Templo Mayor, the historic center of the Aztec empire, infamous as a place of human sacrifice. I was astounded! Why had I never learned in school about Mexico, this highly developed cradle of Western civilization in our own hemisphere, when so much time had been devoted to the cultures of Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere? When I returned home to Virginia I began reading everything I could find about ancient Mexican civilizations, including the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya. This first trip to Mexico opened up a whole new world and was to profoundly influence my future work. I would return there many more times, most recently this past March to study Olmec art and culture.
Comments are welcome!
