Blog Archives
Q: Please speak about how the three pastel paintings series that you have created interrelate.
“The Orator,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
A: The Black Paintings series of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings grew directly from an earlier series, Domestic Threats. While both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly-charged narratives, in the Black Paintings I replaced all background details of my actual setup (furniture, rugs, etc.) with lush black pastel. In this work the ‘actors’ are front and center.
While traveling in Bolivia last spring, I visited a mask exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz. The masks were presented against black walls, were spot-lit, and looked eerily like 3D versions of my Black Paintings. I immediately knew I had stumbled upon a gift. So far I have completed three pastel paintings in the Bolivianos series. Two more are in progress now.
All of my pastel paintings are an example of a style called “contemporary conceptual realism” in which things are not quite as innocent as they seem. Each painting is a Trojan horse. There is plenty of backstory to my images, although I usually prefer not to over-explain them. Much is to be said for mystery in art.
The world I depict is that of the imagination and this realm owes little debt to the natural world. Recently, at an art talk I was reminded how fascinating it is to learn how others respond to my work. As New York art critic Gerrit Henry once remarked, “What we bring to a Rachko… we get back, bountifully.”
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A. I have just started working on a small pastel painting. Although the mask looks Tibetan, surprisingly, it is from Bolivia. It’s one I encountered at a mask exhibition at the Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz. This is another in my “Bolivianos” series.
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Finished and signed
A: I have finally finished “Oracle,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.” It’s the third piece in my “Bolivianos” series.
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Q: What has been your scariest experience as an artist?
“Between,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 20″ x 26″
A: It was the approximately six months in 2007 when I finished the “Domestic Threats” series and was blocked, certain that a strong body of work was behind me, yet not knowing what in the world to do next! For a professional artist who had been working non-stop for 21 years, this was a profoundly painful, confusing, and disorienting time. I remember continuing to force myself to go to the studio and for lack of anything much to do there, spending long hours reading and thinking about art.
Eventually after all of this reflection, I had an epiphany. “Between,” with drastically simplified imagery, was the first in a new series called, “Black Paintings.” I like to think this series includes work that is considerably richer and more profound than the previous “Domestic Threats.”
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: This is the first day – with only one layer of soft pastel in most places – of a 38″ x 58″ pastel painting. It’s based on a photo I composed at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia. This is the fourth work in my “Bolivianos” series.
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I’m working on a large pastel painting based on a photograph shot when I was vacationing recently in La Paz, Bolivia. How fortuitous to stumble upon a mask exhibition at The National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore! It felt as though the exhibition somehow was staged for me, just waiting for me to come along and photograph it.
Incredibly, I returned to New York, after a spectacular trip to Bolivia, and found myself with photographs that are inspiring a new series. Certainly this has never happened before! The series is tentatively called, “Bolivianos.”
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: “White Star,” 38″ x 58″ is slowly progressing. The title of this painting alludes to David Bowie’s last album, “Dark Star” and is my somewhat more optimistic take on that phrase.
The white Guatemalan figure and the Sri Lankan mask on the top right still could use more details. Over time the “Black Paintings” series is becoming more about what is left out. So how much detail to add is an open question.
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Q: What is the one painting that you never want to sell?
“No Cure for Insomnia,” pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
A: There are two: “Myth Meets Dream” and “No Cure for Insomnia.” Both are part of my “Domestic Threats” series and were breakthroughs at the time I made them. They are relatively early works – the first from 1993, the latter from 1999 – and were important in my artistic development.
“Myth Meets Dream” is the earliest pastel painting in which I depict Mexican figures. It includes two brightly painted, carved wooden animals from Oaxaca sent to me in 1992 by my sister-in-law. I have spoken about them before. These figures were the beginning of my ongoing fascination with Mexico.
“No Cure for Insomnia” includes a rare self-portrait and is set in my late aunt’s sixth-floor walkup on West 13th Street, where I lived when I moved to New York in 1997. My four years there were very productive.
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Pearls from artists* # 152
“Between,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 20″ x 26″
* 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 first picture I took of a black man was easy.
That’s the way it sometimes goes for me: I start on a new series of pictures and right away, in some kind of perverse bait-and-switch, I get a good one. This freak of a good picture inevitably inspires a cocky confidence, making me think this new project will be a stroll in the park. But, then, after sometimes two or three more good ones, the next dozen are duds, and that cavalier stroll becomes an uphill slog. It isn’t long before I have to take a breather, having reached the first significant plateau of doubt and lightweight despair. The voice of that despair suggests seducingly to me that I should give up, that I’m a phony, that I’ve made all the good pictures I’m ever going to, and I have nothing more worth saying.
That voice is easy to believe, and, as photographer and essayist (and my early mentor) Ted Orland has noted, it leaves me with only two choices: I can resume the slog and take more pictures, thereby risking further failure and despair, or I can guarantee failure and despair by not making more pictures. It’s essentially a decision between uncertainty and certainty and, curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.
Sally Mann in Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
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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.
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