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Q: You started the Bolivianos series in 2017. It has been 8 years since you created The Champ. This endeavor of focussing on a series for almost a decade’s timeline shows that you embody stability as against many artists who tend to hop on to the next inspiration they find. How has discipline, stability, focus and punctuality defined your works apart from being inspired by Bolivian culture for the series Bolivianos? (Question from Vedica Art Studios and Gallery)
A: My first series, Domestic Threats, lasted fifteen years, and my second, Black Paintings, lasted ten. Stability and related qualities are likely natural parts of my personality, reinforced by my previous professional life. My prior careers as a Navy Commander, commercial pilot, and Boeing-727 Flight Engineer undoubtedly helped develop discipline, stability, focus, and punctuality. Details matter deeply to me; as a Naval Officer for twenty-one years, “attention to detail” was paramount. From my earliest days as an artist, I have been meticulous and dedicated to inventing new techniques and refining the craft of soft pastel.
I dislike wasting precious time. As a goal-oriented person, I continually strive to accomplish as much as possible. These qualities were influenced by my Navy career and further deepened by the tragic loss of my husband onboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. I understand firsthand that life can change in an instant. Whenever I finish one task, I immediately look around and ask, “OK, what’s next?” I devote my studio time to pushing myself and pastel to new technical heights. There’s always more to accomplish as an artist!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 551
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.
A creative process is a philosophical search, shaped by matters of practice and procedure that extend from the first touch of the artist’s pencil, brush, or chisel to the final decisions about what constitutes completeness.
Stylistic particularism – the decision as to what kind of abstract or representational artist you’re going to be – shapes, deepens, and extends the artist’s imaginative powers. Most artists who work for many years see their style evolve, sometimes dramatically. In the 1930s and 1940s Giacometti, who had first been admired for Surrealist sculptures in which representational elements are set in essentially abstract structures, found himself increasingly focused on the direct observation of the human figure. What by the mid-1940s could look like a wholesale transformation of his artistic language was the result of individual decisions all of which, during Giacometti’s career of nearly five decades, interlocked. They reinforced one another. They added up.
Between Abstraction and Representation by Jed Perl in The New York Review of Books, November 24, 2022
Comments are welcome!
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