Blog Archives
Q: What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them? (Question from Bold Journey)
A: The deepest wound was losing Bryan on 9/11. I resolved not to become another victim of that tragedy and chose to continue living and making art.
Because I depend on reference photographs for my work, my first hurdle was learning to use Bryan’s 4×5 view camera. He had always taken the photos for me. In 2002, I enrolled in a photography workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York. To my surprise, I had absorbed a lot just from watching him, and I went on to formally study photography for several years. In 2009, I was invited to present a solo photography exhibition in New York.
By 2003, I resumed my Domestic Threats series. The first large pastel I completed from one of my own photographs was titled She Embraced It and Grew Stronger. It was autobiographical: “she” was me, and “it” was life without Bryan.
That series ended in 2007, by which time I was finding more peace. But then I faced a new challenge: creative block. For months I struggled, but I kept showing up daily. Eventually, a breakthrough came, and I began the Black Paintings series. The dark backgrounds represented the place I had emerged from; the vibrant figures symbolized resilience and life.
In 2017, inspired by a museum exhibition in La Paz, I began Bolivianos, based on Carnival masks. Many view this as my boldest and most exciting work yet.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 370
Barbara at work on “The Orator.” Photo: Maria Cox
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Nothing determines your creative life more than doing it. This is so obvious and fundamental, yet how much energy is wasted on speculation, worry, and doubt without the relief of action. “Success is 90 percent just showing up.” I can’t tell you the number of problems that are solved with this one simple principle, because when you start, it leads to something, anything. And when you have something tangible in front of you, then you can react to it and amend it. And that will lead to something else. In the book, In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr., which looked at companies in America that excelled at what they did, one of the guiding principles was, “Do it, mend it, fix it.”
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
Comments are welcome!
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