Blog Archives
Q: Travel clearly plays an important role in your practice. What does it give you? (Question from “Pastel, Passion, and Perseverance: An Interview with Barbara Rachko” in .ART Odyssey: Healing)
With friends at a Buddhist Monastery, Gangtok, India
A: Travel is the spark. It opens you up, makes you think differently, introduces you to people everywhere.
It makes you realize that people are the same wherever you go – which in turn makes all the political divisions and wars feel so senseless.
The work itself gets made in silence, but those bright sparks from travel feed that silence. Countries like India and Bolivia are full of character and color. They shift your perspective, and you bring that back to the studio.
Pearls from artists* # 711
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
The people considered ‘most accomplished’ in our culture pass through a standardized education conveyor belt to be indoctrinated into a cutthroat hamster wheel success ladder. Yet the production and consumption of those goods are destroying the planet that sustains our very lives. Those who question the absurdity of these choices are considered deviant. Try to carve a different path for yourself that makes sense to you, and every societal force conspires to push you back into that absurd groove that virtually everyone else swerved into long ago.
Artists also deal with vocation specific stress. We confront repeated rejection in a way that most other professionals do not. Our relationships may suffer from family members who fail to understand how art careers ‘work.’ They may resent that we bring in little money. There is often a maddening lack of congruity between artists’ abilities, sustained hard work, and reward. Engineers who excel at their job can make a good living, while highly skilled creatives may never reap financial benefits, even after a lifetime of effort. Frequently, artists must reckon with the success of others who have far less talent, depth, and dedication, while endlessly struggling to keep their own practice afloat. Finally, although many people suffer from early trauma and manage to survive and move on, it is in the nature of sone artists’ work to repeatedly re-expose themselves to pain through their practice.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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(In celebration of the 14th anniversary of my blog today, I am republishing the very first post from July 15, 2012). Q: What does it take to be an artist, especially one living and working in New York?
A: The three Big P’s – Patience, Persistence, and Passion. Without all three you will not have the stamina to work tirelessly for very little external reward. You can expect help from no one.
There are so many obstacles to art-making and countless reasons to just give up. When you really think about it, it’s amazing that great art gets made at all. So why do we do it? Above all, it’s about making our time on earth matter, about devotion to our innate gifts and love of our hard-fought creative process.
And, my God, it even gets harder as we get older! So what do we do? We dig in that much deeper. It’s a most noble and sacred calling – you know when you have it – and that’s what separates those of us who are in it for the long haul from the wimps, fakers, and hangers-on. I say to my fellow artists who continue to work despite the endless challenges, we are all true heroes!
These words still ring true – even though they sound naive now – and it’s good, even for me, to occasionally be reminded.
Most importantly, THANK YOU to my 229,000+ subscribers for taking this journey with me. When I began this blog in 2012, I had no idea it would prove to be so popular… WOW!
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Pearls from artists* # 707
The 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
Intuition often serves as a diving rod that guides us to our secret language. ‘Listening to your gut’ is actually a rapid process of previous experience and cumulative knowledge that results in a seemingly sudden ‘educated guess.’ You may not be able to consciously access all the memories and information that led to your ‘hunch,’ but they are there, nevertheless. Many of us have a keenly developed sense of intuition, but do not trust it. But often, when we are deliberating a problem, we lay our head on our pillow, all the rational ‘pros and cons’ drop away, and we know the answer to our question. We simply need to cultivate and have faith in that knowing.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 705
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
There are infinitely many ways to structure art and as many ways to construe it once it exists. One mark of a great poem, novel, symphony, or painting is that innumerable interpretations are generated—different people see it differently from one time to another. The hundredth time I taste an artwork I love, I still find something new in it, because I am different, and because there is some largeness or manyness in the art that can resonate with the changing versions of myself.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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Pearls from artists* # 703
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.
Artmaking embodies freedom, in a way that few vocations do. But, while we have no supervisors in our studios, we are not quite as free as we imagine. We all carry sone cumulative art baggage. All the people and ideas that have influenced us over the years have shaped the art we make today. Sone guidance served us well, seamlessly dovetailing into our own divine direction. Yet others may hold us back, constraining the distinct development of our creative articulation.
The work we do is affected by logistical limitations, such as time, space, and money. But we also possess biases, assumptions, rules, values, methodologies, goal structures, and conceptual frameworks we have assimilated into our practice along the way. We may delude ourselves into thinking we have actively chosen these limiting parameters, instead of recognizing that we may have absorbed them purely by default. Authority figures, over the course of our entire lives, have provided positive or negative reinforcement, not only through overt criticism or praise, but also through omission. These pressures are frequently tacit, wordlessly shaping the direction of our practice when a piece was changed or ignored by the powers that be.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Q: What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world? (Question from Bold Journey)
A: On September 11, 2001, my husband, Bryan Jack, was a passenger on the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. Losing Bryan was devastating beyond words. We were newly married, and he was my soulmate.
That day reshaped my life. I learned not to waste precious time because everything can change in an instant. In the studio, I push myself and the pastel medium to new technical heights. When I complete one task, my first thought is always: “What’s next?”
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Q: What makes you lose track of time — and find yourself again? (Question from Bold Journey)
A: When I’m having a productive day in the studio, I’m fully present and absorbed. Working in soft pastel on sandpaper, I become immersed in solving technical problems and improving the painting on my easel. Hours pass unnoticed, and I often need to remind myself to stop for lunch. Nothing exists except the work and my relationship with it. Most artists know this feeling of flow—a state of being that’s both natural and essential to creative work.
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Q: How do you think your recent trip to Bolivia will affect your work?
Reference photo from my trip to Bolivia
A: I have been back in the United States for one month and I know from past trips that there is always a long gestation period as I reflect on colorful new experiences, new sights, sounds, etc. My three and a half-weeks in Bolivia were non-stop, intense, and just full of so many high points. Bolivia is a fascinating country with profound cultural riches, and exceptionally warm and welcoming people. I experienced new friendships and events that were way beyond anything I could have imagined. In short, there’s a lot to process!
In the immediate aftermath, back in the studio I am deliberately selecting more vibrant colors and bumping up the contrast and drama in the painting on my easel (“Gatecrasher”) as I attempt to reflect some of what I saw and experienced in Oruro during Carnaval. I have begun to plan a pastel painting based on the mask pictured above, which I photographed in La Paz. We shall see what new work is created over the coming months and years. For now, it’s exciting to be reenergized and to have new subject matter with which to work. And, at this early date, I can barely conceive what our new Bolivia documentary will be like!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 693
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Earlier I wrote that I as an artist must concern myself with painting and not waste energy on trying to decipher other people’s intentions or motives. I still believe this to be correct.
(My main purpose in life is to paint, this is my profession. I am most happy when I am alone in the studio working. The other problems of politics exist outside my studio.)
note: I am not sure of this. I am sure of one thing that I am most happy when I am alone working in the studio. The distance between art + politics is one of grey. I have thought of my involvement in art as being one of combat—the paintings are weapons designed to destroy oppressors i.e., the establishment. Art is none of This! Art is Art.
A painting does not represent anything but itself. It shouldn’t look like anything else or make for any allusions. A painting is a painting just as a Rose is a Rose! May God bless Gertrude Stein!
Jack Whitten Notes From the Woodshed
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