Blog Archives
Q: Do you use air filters in your studio?
Pastel detritus
A: No, but I wear a surgical mask when I work, to prevent accidentally breathing the pastel dust. Also, I apply a barrier cream, called Artgard, to my hands to prevent pigment being absorbed into my skin through any cuts I might have. I take care that my head is always higher than my hand as I work, so the dust falls below my mouth and nose.
It may be hard to tell from the photo but my easel is tilted forward, allowing pastel dust to fall onto the easel and floor. I am well aware of the toxicity of pastel and believe I take the proper precautions. After forty years working with soft pastel, so far I’ve managed to stay healthy.
Comments are welcome.
Q: Why do you always work in series?
A: I don’t really have any choice in the matter. It’s more or less the way I have always worked so it feels natural for my creative output to unfold in series.
Art-making comes from a deep place. It’s a way of making one’s time on earth matter. Working in series mimics the more or less gradual way that our lives happen, the way we slowly evolve and change over the years. Life-altering, “A-Ha” moments happen, certainly, but seldom do we wake up drastically different – in thinking, in behavior, etc. – from what we were the day before.
Working in series feels authentic. It helps me eke out every lesson my pastel paintings have to teach. With each completed piece, my ideas and my creative process are able to progress a step or two further.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 723
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Francis Bacon Interview with David Sylvester
DS: You really are not working with any thought of an audience?
FB: I’m working for myself; what else have I got to work for? How can I work for an audience? What do you imagine that an audience would want? I have got nobody to excite except myself, so I am always surprised if anybody else likes my work sometimes. I suppose I’m very lucky, of course, to be able to earn my living by something that really absorbs me to try and do, if that’s what you call luck.
Stuart Horodner in The Art Life: On Creativity and Career
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Pastel painting in progress
A: I’m slowly working on an untitled, large, 58” x 38,” “Bolivianos” pastel painting based on a reference photo taken in La Paz in February. This one is number thirty-six in the series.
Comments are welcome!
Q: You once faced a major creative block. How did you break through it? (Question from “Pastel, Passion, and Perseverance: An Interview with Barbara Rachko” in .ART Odyssey: Healing)
A: That was in 2007, after I finished my Domestic Threats series. The last painting in that series hardly interested me. I was wringing my hands, thinking, “I’m a full-time artist not making art —what do I do NOW?” It was frightening. At the time, I was also taking a jazz history class at Lincoln Center. One day the instructor spoke about Miles Davis.
He explained how Davis moved away from bebop —where musicians packed in as many notes as possible to show off—to cool jazz, where every note carried weight.
And something clicked. I realized I’d been working like bebop: showing off meticulous detail, every stitch of fabric, every grain in a wooden floor.
That revelation was my way forward. I stripped everything back. No more domestic backdrops. Just the figures, placed against solid black. Only what mattered. That was the beginning of my Black Paintings.
The block that had haunted me for months lifted in an instant, because I’d found a new way to speak. I realized the black background represented the dark place I had emerged from; the vibrant figures symbolized resilience and life.
It was like a lightbulb going off.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue slowly working on “Metamorph.” 26” x 20,” soft pastel on sandpaper.
Comments are welcome!
(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!
Comments are welcome!
Q: You’ve been working with the same medium and subject matter for decades. How did that begin, and how has it sustained you for so long? (Question from “Pastel, Passion, and Perseverance: An Interview with Barbara Rachko” in .ART Odyssey: Healing)
A: Back in the early 1990s I began using folk art as my subject matter, and I was incredibly lucky. More than thirty years later, I’m still working with it. As artists, we don’t know at the start whether a subject will sustain us, whether it will keep our curiosity alive. For me it has. I’ve always been fascinated by different cultures around the world, and that continues to feed the work. There’s freedom in that kind of framework.
I chose pastel on sandpaper as my medium. I don’t have to question it anymore. That choice itself has opened space to keep growing.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 708
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Free play must be tempered with judgment, and judgment tempered with freedom to play. We perform innumerable balancing acts, dances between opposite poles, each of which is necessary for life and art to exist. We have to live right on the balance point of an equi-valence between free flow of impulse and constant testing and questing for quality. With too little judgment, we get trash. We too much judgment, we get blockage. In order to play freely, we must have a command of technique. Back and forth flows the dialogue of imagination and discipline, passion and precision. We harmonize groundedness in daily practice with spiritedness in daily stepping out into the unknown.
Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue slowly working on “Metamorph,” 26” x 20,” soft pastel on sandpaper.
Comments are welcome!
