Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 372
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.
Artists will, in their long education of sifting through what they like and respond to and what they don’t, find they “see” an artist’s work in the environment. They see a Corot or a Hopper. They know then that they have found a good subject because of the similarity of poetic attraction. They see with a set of limits or conventions that speak to them.
But as time goes on and you continue working, you find you do not consider those subjects any longer but they still register. They belong to someone else. You have found other affinities. Or perhaps more importantly you have found your own. You respond now to your own internal song. Art is about art as much as it is about nature. Everything we respond to has passed through our filter of artistic influences.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
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Q: Can you tell us about the different series of work you have created and what they embody?
Barbara’s studio with work in progress
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 two years ago, I visited a mask exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz. The masks were presented against black walls, 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 nine pastel paintings in the Bolivianos series. One is awaiting finishing touches, one is in progress now, and I am planning the next one.
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. In this sense each painting is a kind of Trojan horse. There is plenty of backstory to my images, although I usually prefer not to over-explain them. Some mystery must always remain in art.
The world I depict is that of the imagination and this realm owes little debt to the natural world. I recently gave an art talk where 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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Pearls from artists* # 366
Studio entrance
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
For some artists the studio becomes like a temple, a place that becomes invested with a sacred energy. I was looking at a book recently called Artist at Work. It featured the studios of several well-known American artists. In almost every case the space reminded me of a chapel in a cathedral. The physical, emotional, and even spiritual elevation the space created contributed to the work.
This is the home turf of your creative space. A space that stays undisturbed from the rest of daily forces. It stays open for your arrival. When you walk in you acquire a heightened readiness to begin. Your dining room table that must be cleared off for the evening meal will require more energy from you each time you begin. but a studio collects energy and focuses it, ready for your return. That space may be your garden, the view behind the house, or a desk in a bedroom that is reserved for your creative work. But it will help to secure it. It is your temple, the place where you focus your energies to express yourself. Your creative home base.
Ian Roberts in Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision
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Q: During one of the most gripping times of your life, you were personally affected by the 9/11 attack on our country. Your husband was killed on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Would you mind telling us about it and how it has shaped your work?
‘Mi Teleferico’ line, La Paz, Bolivia
A: In the summer of 2002 I was ready to – I HAD to – get back to work in my studio. I knew exactly what I must do. More than ever before, learning and painting would become the avenues to my well-being.
Because I use reference photos for my pastel paintings, the first challenge was to learn how to use Bryan’s 4 x 5 view camera. At that time I was not a photographer. Bryan had always taken reference photos for me.
In July 2002 I enrolled in a view camera workshop at New York’s International Center of Photography. Much to my surprise I had already absorbed quite a lot from watching Bryan. After the initial workshop, I continued more formal studies of photography for several years. In 2009, I am proud to say, I was invited to present a solo photography exhibition at a New York gallery!
In 2003 I resumed making my Domestic Threats series of pastel paintings, something that had seemed impossible after Bryan’s death. The first large pastel painting that I created using a reference photograph taken by me confirmed that my life’s work could continue. The title of that painting, “She Embraced It and Grew Stronger,” was autobiographical. “She” is me, and “it” meant continuing on without Bryan and living life for both of us.
Having had a long successful run, the Domestic Threats series finally ended in early 2007. Around that time I was feeling happier and had come to better terms with losing Bryan. While this is a tragedy I will never truly be at peace with, dealing with the loss became easier with time.
Then in 2007 I suddenly became blocked and did not know where to take my work next. I had never experienced creative block and especially for a full-time professional artist, this was a painful time. Still, I continued to go to the studio every day and eventually, thanks to a confluence of favorable circumstances, the block ended.
My next pastel painting series was called Black Paintings. I viewed the black background as literally, the very dark place that I was emerging from, exactly like the figures emerging in these paintings. The figures themselves were wildly colorful and full of life, but that black background – one critic has dubbed it my “blackground” – is always there.
Still the work continues to evolve. In 2017 I began my third pastel painting series called Bolivianos, based on a mask exhibition encountered in La Paz at the The National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore. Many people have proclaimed this to be my most bold, daring, and exciting pastel painting series yet. And I think they may be right! Continuing on the journey I began 30+ years ago, I am looking forward to creating many new, striking pastel paintings!
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My blog turns 7 years old on July 15! Here is 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?
Barbara’s Studio with works in progress.
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!
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Lucky me to still be in the same studio! However, when you visit now, you see more tables full of pastels, more postcards on the walls, newer pastel paintings, etc. What I wrote seven years ago still rings true.
Most importantly, THANK YOU to my 42,000+ subscribers for taking this journey with me!
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Pearls from artists* # 360
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.
Human beings have been creative beings for a really long time – long enough and consistently enough that it appears to be a totally natural impulse. To put the story in perspective, consider this fact: the earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Q: What made you fall in love with soft pastel versus another medium?
“The Champ” in “Worlds Seen & Unseen” at Westbeth Gallery, NYC
A: I like to get my hands right into my work. In other words, I don’t like brushes or anything else to intervene between my hands and what I’m working on.
I work with 400 or 500 grit Uart sandpaper so the downside is that I rub my fingertips raw from blending layers of soft pastel onto sandpaper. I’ve tried using rubber gloves (they make my fingers sweat and wear out fast), cotton gloves (they leave bits of lint on the paper), using a blending stump (it leaves lint on the paper), etc., but nothing works as well as my own fingers. So sore fingertips are an unavoidable occupational hazard. I sometimes take days off from the studio just so that my hands can heal.
I adore color and love looking at the thousands of pastels in my studio! After working with this medium for more than thirty years, I still love what I am able to accomplish and I am still pushing it to do new things. The colors are rich, intense, velvety. No other medium is as sensuous or as satisfying.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Do you have any ”dont’s” for artists that you swear by?
On my studio wall
A: I don’t remember where I found this list, but most artists probably need to be reminded once in awhile. I certainly do!
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Pearls from artists* # 346
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.
In my view… the most useful definition of creativity is the following one: people are artistically creative when they love what they are doing, know what they are doing, and actively engage in the tasks we call art-making. The three elements of creativity are thus loving, knowing, and doing; or heart, mind, and hands; or, as Buddhist teaching has it, great faith, great question, and great courage.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
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Pearls from artists* # 341
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 classic work of art is a form of life with its own bizarre consciousness. In the performing arts – theater, dance, music – this consciousness is not reducible to the minds of the performers onstage. The participants are parts of a spiritual organism that includes and transcends them. In our modern materialist mindset we naturally attribute the impression that a work speaks in its own voice to the intention of the author, who used it as a vehicle for her own ideas. But… works of art express much that their authors never intended to say: they exceed the limited views of those who bring them into being.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
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