Blog Archives
Q: What significance do the folk art figures that you collect during your travels have for you?
Barbara’s studio
A: I am drawn to each figure because it possesses a powerful presence that resonates with me. I am not sure exactly how or why, but I know each piece I collect has lessons to teach.
Who made this thing? How? Why? Where? When? I feel connected to each object’s creator and curiosity leads me to become a detective and an archaeologist to find out more about them and to figure out how to best use them in my work.
The best way I can describe it: after nearly three decades of seeking out, collecting, and using these folk art figures as symbols in my work, the entire process has become a rich personal journey towards gaining greater knowledge and wisdom.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Can you speak about a book (or books) that deeply influenced you as an artist?
Barbara’s well-worn copy of “Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien”
A: One such book that stands out is “Camille Pissaro: Letters to His Son Lucien.” The book is comprised of weekly letters from a father conveying wisdom about his craft, art, and life, over roughly twenty years, to a beloved son, who is just beginning his artistic journey. I discovered this gem about thirty years ago when I was just starting to find my way as an artist, too. Pissarro’s words are beautiful, poignant, and deeply felt. He has much to say to artists because, sadly, we still contend with the same problems, such as how to remain authentic and earn a living, how to deal with galleries and collectors, how to stay focused on the work, etc. I often enjoy rereading favorite passages simply because it makes me feel less alone as an artist.
Comments are welcome!
Q: How important are the titles of your pastel paintings?
“Provocateur,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26″ x 20″
A: I’d say they are important. Titles serve mainly as “a way in” for viewers, giving some clues about my thought processes while I am making a painting. Usually titles emerge only after I have been working on a painting for weeks or months. For me they are very much like mementos after a very interesting journey.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Your pastel paintings are immediately recognizable as yours alone. Did you consciously try to develop a signature style in your work?
Barbara’s studio
A: I don’t believe that is even possible. An artist’s style is something that evolves with plain hard work and experience, over many years of trial and error, as one finds what techniques work best and discards those that don’t. It is a process of continually experimenting, refining, and clarifying. In other words, style is something that emerges naturally as you gradually strive to improve your art-making.
Style develops in close connection to what an artist is saying as she undergoes a very personal and idiosyncratic journey. Again, it would seem improbable for an artist to strive for any particular style, since style is not something over which an artist can exert much conscious control.
I would even say that each artist’s unique style is inevitable. It would be nearly impossible now to make a pastel painting or photograph that does NOT look like a Rachko.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What do you think are the most important qualities in an artist?
“Big Deal,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
A: Two essentials immediately come to mind. I believe imagination and curiosity are very important qualities, not only for artists, but for anyone who hopes to look back on a well-lived life. As Lauren Bacall famously said, “Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.”
It is curiosity that keeps people laser-focused on a lifetime journey of learning. I’d venture to say that curiosity is the not-so-secret quality of accomplished people in every profession. We humans can never know enough!
Comments are welcome!
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.
Comments are welcome!
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.
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!
Pearls from artists* # 121
Sri Lanka
* 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, when they are absorbed in their work, are also deeply connected to other human beings. The theologian Matthew Fox said, “The journey the artist makes in turning inward to listen and to trust his or her images is a communal journey.” The psychologist Otto Rank argued that, “The collective unconscious, not rugged individuality, gives birth to creativity.”
To be sure, artists are not making real contact with real human beings as they work in the studio, but they are making contact in the realm of the spirit. The absence of the pressures real people bring to bear on them allows them, in solitude, to love humankind. Whereas in their day job they may hate their boss and at Thanksgiving they must deal with their alcoholic parents, in the studio their best impulses and most noble sentiments are free to emerge.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 81
“Poker Face,” 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.
The creative process remains as baffling and unpredictable to me today as it did when I began my journey over forty years ago. On the one hand, it seems entirely logical – insight building on insight; figures from my past, the culture, and everyday life sparking scenes and images on canvas; and all of it – subject, narrative, theme – working together with gesture, form, light to capture deeply felt experience. But in real time the process is a blur, a state that precludes consciousness or any kind of rational thinking. When I’m working well, I’m lost in the moment, painting quickly and intuitively, reacting to forms on the canvas, allowing their meaning to reveal itself to me. In every painting I make I’m looking for some kind of revelation, something I didn’t see before. If it surprises me, hopefully it will surprise the viewer, too.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
Comments are welcome!
