Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 337
Barbara’s studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I think society did a great disservice to artists when we started saying they were geniuses, instead of saying they had geniuses. That happened around the Renaissance, with the rise of a more rational and human-centered view of life. The gods and the mysteries fell away, and suddenly we put all credit and blame for creativity on the artists themselves – making the all-too-fragile humans completely responsible for the vagaries of inspiration.
In the process, we also venerated art and artists beyond their appropriate stations. The distinction of “being a genius” (and the rewards and status often associated with it) elevated creators into something like a priestly cast – and perhaps even into minor deities – which I think is a bit too much pressure for mere mortals, no matter how talented. That’s when artists start to really crack, driven mad and broken in half by the weight and weirdness of their gifts.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you think artists should post prices on their websites?
Screenshot of Barbara’s homepage
A: It depends on what the purpose and objectives of a particular artist’s website are. I use my website to document all of the work, the process, exhibitions, and press in one central place. I do not list prices. If someone is interested in more information, including prices, they can easily email or call me.
I have two assistants who help with social media and my online presence continues to grow. Many of my available pastel paintings are included on commercial sites like Artsy. Current prices are listed there.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you plan your work in advance or is it improvisation?
Barbara’s studio
A: My process is somewhere in between those two. I work from my own set-up or on-site photographs and make a preliminary sketch in charcoal before I start a pastel painting. Thousands of decisions about composition, color, etc. occur as I go along.
Although it starts out somewhat planned, I have no idea what a pastel painting will look like when it’s finished. Each piece takes about three months, not counting foreign travel, research, and a gestation period of several months to determine what the next pastel painting will even be.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Would you speak about the meaning of your work and the different materials you use?
About half of Barbara’s pastels
A: It is as difficult to explain the meaning of my art as it is to interpret the meaning of life! I am invested in and concerned with process: foreign travel, prodigious reading, devotion to craft, months of slow meticulous work in the studio trying to create an exciting work of art that has never been seen before, etc. I love making pastel paintings! Many years ago I challenged myself to push the limits of what soft pastel can achieve. I am still doing so.
I leave it to others – viewers, arts writers, critics, art historians – to study my creative journey and talk about meanings. I believe an artist is inspired to create and viewers ponder the creation. I would not presume to tell anyone how to react to my work.
For many years I have been devoted to promoting soft pastel as a fine art medium. There are excellent reasons it has been around for five hundred years! It is the most permanent of media. There’s no liquid binder to cause oxidizing or cracking over time, as happens with oil paint. Pastel colors are intense because they are close to being pure pigment. Pastel allows direct application (no brushes) with no drying time and no color changes.
I use UArt acid-free sandpaper. This is not sandpaper from a hardware store. It is made for artists who work in pastel and allows me to build up layers of pigment without using a fixative. My process – slowly applying and layering pastels, blending and mixing new colors directly on the paper, making countless adjustments, searching for the best and/or most vivid colors – continually evolves. Each pastel painting takes months to create.
Comments are welcome!
My blog turns 6 years old tomorrow! Here is the very first post from July 15, 2012. Q: What does it take to be an artist, especially one living and working in New York?
Barbara’s Studio with works in progress.
A: The three Big P’s – Patience, Persistence, and Passion. Without all three you will not have the stamina to work tirelessly for very little external reward. You can expect help from no one.
There are so many obstacles to art-making and countless reasons to just give up. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that great art gets made at all. So why do we do it? Above all it’s about making our time on earth matter, about devotion to our innate gifts and love of our hard-fought creative process.
And, my God, it even gets harder as we get older! So what do we do? We dig in that much deeper. It’s a most noble and sacred calling – you know when you have it – and that’s what separates those of us who are in it for the long haul from the wimps, fakers, and hangers-on. I say to my fellow artists who continue to work despite the endless challenges, we are all true heroes!
__________
Lucky me to still be in the same studio! However, when you visit now, you see more tables full of pastels, more postcards on the walls, newer pastel paintings, etc. More importantly, what I wrote six years ago still rings true!
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you deal with the loneliness of working in a studio?
Barbara’s studio
A: I never feel lonely when I’m working. I love being in my studio and even after thirty years, still find the whole process of making a pastel painting completely engaging.
Painting is the one activity that not only uses all of my mental and physical abilities, but challenges me to push further. I am at my best in the studio.
Because there is always more to learn and process into the work, creating art is endlessly fascinating! Most artists probably feel the same way. It’s one of the reasons we persist.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 261
Suffolk County
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I think that the sensation and process are almost identical in all creative activities. The pattern seems universal. The study and hard work, The prepared mind. The being stuck. The sudden shift. The letting go of control. The letting go of self.
Alan Lightman in A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 255
Barbara at work on “The Storyteller”
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… several basic assumptions I have about the need for authenticity:
- Because in the end there is no other kind of art.
- I could have used the word ‘originality,” rather than authenticity, if the word’s root in “origin,” as in, “from the depth or source,” is recognized. However, the word implies a certain newness, “never done before,” that authenticity does not, and art in general does not need, in order to be deeply personal.
- Something that is authentic “rings true” for us. It comes from an inner truth. We draw from a source that is inner-directed rather than outer-directed, to use Maslow’s expression about self-actualization.
- Creating work that is authentic has a sacredness about it. It may be a way out – a small way perhaps, but at least a personal way – of a social dynamic that is all economics, consumerism, greed, and disregard for inner life. The word “science” comes from a root meaning “to separate.” Our cultural world view has been deeply influenced by that. Anything that we come to authentically in our artistic expression demands a personal inner synthesis. It is experience and insight won firsthand. The more we assimilate our “experience” from the advertising/media/consumer/government perspective the less authentic it will be.
- Most of what we express creatively is prelinguistic. The deeper insights are obviously coming from somewhere. They are not logically structured in the mind, but it may take logic to get them expressed.
- Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to the world if you paint or dance or write. The world can probably get by without your efforts. But that is not the point. The point is what the inner process of following your creative process will do, to you. It is clearly abut process. Love the work, love the process. Our fascination will pull our attention forward. That, also, will fascinate the viewer.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 228
Barbara’s studio
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… we’re plagued by the certainty that we haven’t quite achieved what we’d hoped we could. The work is only as good as our small, imperfect, pedestrian selves can make it. It exists in some idealized form, just out of reach. And so we push on. Driven by a desire to get it right, and the suspicion that there is no getting it right, we do our work in the hopes of coming close. There’s no room in this process for an overblown ego. A career – whether it takes us to Cap d’Antibes or to the Staybridge Suites off the interstate – can be the result, but if it’s the goal, we’ve lost before we’ve even begun.
Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
Comments are welcome!
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!
