Blog Archives
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.
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Q: Do you have a daily ritual that helps you start working in your studio?
Barbara’s studio
A: In the morning before I start working on a pastel painting, I read for roughly half an hour. Usually I read something art-related; for example, see the books that are quoted on Wednesdays in “Pearls from artists” on this blog.
As I’m reading, I look across at the painting on my easel and soon something becomes apparent, some annoying thing that needs immediate attention. That’s where I will begin. As I’m looking, of course, I’m thinking and the solution to a technical problem becomes obvious. Before I know it, I’m up and working, slowly improving the painting as I go.
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Pearls from artists* # 140
“Big Wow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Frankly, I think you’re better off doing something on the assumption that you will not be rewarded for it, that it will not receive the recognition it deserves, that it will not be worth the time and effort invested in it.
The obvious advantage to this angle is, of course, if anything good comes of it, then it’s an added bonus.
The second, more subtle and profound advantage is that by scuppering all hope of worldly and social betterment from one creative act, you are finally left with only one question to answer:
Do you make this damn thing exist or not?
And once you can answer that truthfully for yourself, the rest is easy.
Hugh MacLeod in Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
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Pearls from artists* # 138
A corner of 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.
BM: … so many artists value the sense of retaining something of the child, like the strangeness that children have where they’ll just make a gesture or say something that we filter as adults.
MM: Sometimes people think that it is childish, but it’s not, it is child-like. People get confused. One of the things we are trying to do as artists – it’s not romantic – is to get to a point where we are seeing things in a fresh way, in a way that we’ve never seen them before, the way children do. So we are acknowledging the magic in every moment we have.
BM: And it’s not a form of nostalgia, but the history of an entire human being.
MM: Exactly. Rather than nostalgia it is teaching us how to be present.
Conversations with Meredith Monk by Bonnie Marranca
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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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Pearls from artists* # 137
“She Embraced It and Grew Stronger,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
* 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 was a determined young woman. I was driven. My problem was not in being an artist. I didn’t realize how much my being a woman would get in the way of being an artist in the world. I wasn’t aware of it. I was just doing my thing. My pain came from being treated like I was a bad woman, in my personal life. That being driven and assertive and doing my vision was really bad because I was not a supporter and a nurturer of men. The men were the ones who made me feel bad. It could just be that they were not strong men. It was very painful and the way that I took it was as if there was something the matter with me. Yet, there was no way I was not going to pursue my vision. It was not negotiable.
Conversations with Meredith Monk by Bonnie Marranca
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Pearls from artists* # 135
Chalcatzingo (Mexico)
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
[Meredith Monk on beginning a new piece and whether it gets easier over time].
I always say that the fear is overwhelming at the beginning. It’s like jumping off a cliff. You have absolutely no idea what is going on. It is like being a detective. You try to follow every clue that comes up. Some of them are McGuffins, but I think that is what the process is. It starts out with fear, and I think that’s a good thing. If you know what you are doing already, what is the point in doing it? It is always like hanging out and tolerating pain and the fear of the unknown. Then usually what happens is that a little something will come up. If I am sitting at the piano – and I remember sitting at the piano and almost shaking at the beginning of this piece – one little phrase will come up. And then you get a little interested in that one little phrase. Or I say to myself, “Step by step.” Another thing I say to myself, “Remember playfulness, Meredith?”
What happens at a certain point is that the thing itself starts coming in and you realize that you are more interested than you are afraid. You are in this thing, whatever it is, and fear is useless at a certain point. But at the beginning, it is not bad. It is saying that you are risking. I think that taking the chance on risking is something that keeps you young. I’ll tell you, what you are saying about my skills – I don’t find it easier. It is just as hard as it ever was. I don’t think, “Now I have these skills.” I don’t think in those terms at all.
… When you are making something new, you aren’t going to be able to use the same technique that you used on something else. Maybe other people think it is easier as they go along. I think part of the challenge is not to rely on things that you know, and to keep on listening. It is really a process of listening to what something needs. What’s right for it.
Conversations with Meredith Monk by Bonnie Marranca
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Pearls from artists* # 134
“Bryan,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 22″ x 28″, 1988
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
You never want to forget your roots. Going back to your roots is very important so you don’t get carried away from something essential. Otherwise, you move farther and farther away from the hands-on approach to making art. It is very important to go back to the beginnings at all times. You spiral back.
Conversations with Meredith Monk by Bonnie Marranca
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Pearls from artists* # 130
Studio corner
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
In the aesthetic act something comes to life. That’s a good phrase for it, comes to life, suggesting both something separate, apart from life, extra, from elsewhere, and something not alive in the act of being invested with life. The phrase brought to life does this same double take.
Ali Smith in Artful
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Pearls from artists* # 127
eBook cover
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Two facts differentiate Daybook from my work in visual art.
The first is the simple safety of numbers. There are 6500 Daybooks in the world. My contribution to them was entirely mental, emotional. I never put my hand on a single copy of these objects until I picked up a printed book. I made no physical effort; no blood, no bone marrow moved from me to them. I do not mean that I made no effort. On the contrary, the effort was excruciating because it was so without physical involvement, so entirely hard-wrought out of nothing physical at all; no matter how little of the material world goes into visual art, something of it always does, and that something keeps you company as you work. There seems to me no essential difference in psychic cost between visual and literary effort, The difference is in what emerges as result. A work of visual art is painfully liable to accident; months of concentration and can be destroyed by a careless shove. Not so 6500 objects. This fact gives me a feeling of security like that of living in a large, flourishing, and prosperous family.
Ancillary to this aspect is the commonplaceness of a book. People do not have to go much out of their way to get hold of it, and they can carry it around with them and mark it up, and even drop it in a tub while reading in a bath. It is a relief to have my work an ordinary part of life, released from the sacrosanct precincts of galleries and museums. A book is also cheap. Its cost is roughly equivalent to its material value as an object, per se. This seems to me more healthy than the price of art, which bears no relation to its quality and fluctuates in the marketplace in ways that leave it open to exploitation. An artist who sells widely has only to mark a piece of paper for it to become worth an amount way out of proportion to its original cost. This aspect of art has always bothered me, and is one reason why I like teaching; an artist can exchange knowledge and experience for money in an economy as honest as that of a bricklayer.
Anne Truitt in Turn: The Journal of an Artist
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