Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 534
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Today I am quoting myself:
I strive to always do what is best for my art practice. It’s difficult sometimes, but it’s important to ignore most of what other people say. They mean well, but advice to artists is often misguided, especially when it is unsolicited. Fortunately, our hearts are never wrong.
B. Rachko on a Facebook post
Comments are welcome!
Q: There are so many instances in the art world where paintings are discovered to be fakes. Do you think this is a potential problem where your work is concerned? Can your pastel paintings be forged?
A: For the record, a little-appreciated fact about my pastel-on-sandpaper paintings is that they can never be forged. To detect a fake, you would only need to x-ray them. If dozens of layers of revisions are not visible under the final pastel painting, you are not looking at an original Rachko, period.
My completed paintings are the results of thousands of decisions. They are the product of an extremely meticulous, labor-intensive, and self-invented process. This is the difference between spending months thinking about and creating a painting, as I do, or a single day. It’s highly doubtful that my rigorous creative process can EVER be duplicated.
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!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 