Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 10

Pearls from artists* # 631

With “Maestro,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 35” x 28.5” framed

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Selling your art is harder than creating it. Every artist dreams of being able to sell his/her art and make a considerable profit from it and/or build a business based on art. This would give artists the opportunity to make art full-time. However, the process is neither easy nor quick. It requires determination, discipline, and consistency. The idea of becoming a successful artist overnight almost doesn’t exist. All the artists who seem to be “overnight successes” put in a lot of hard work for years.

Dr. Bianca Turner in The Business of Art: A Guide for Visual Artists to Become Successful Entrepreneurs

Comments are welcome!

Q: What kind of reactions do you get from spectators at your exhibitions? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

A group exhibition in New Jersey

A: Reactions to my work run the gamut – from dopey comments like, “I’m scared!” to “How in the world is such beauty and profundity possible to achieve using only soft pastel on a piece of sandpaper!”

I’m sure most artists can say the same. We can only hope that our work finds its way to an audience that has the eyes, heart, and mind to understand, to appreciate on a deep level the decades of devotion, sacrifice, and hard work that go into creating works of art.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 630

With Margaret Anderson, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Fresh experiences can lead to new tastes and a life that feels longer, Julie contended. Remember when you were little and an hour-long car ride felt like a lifetime? “I think it’s because, truly, everything’s new. When you experience new things, time slows down a little bit,” she told me. “When you go on trips – which is my favorite thing to do – everything is new, and you feel young again. And reinvigorated with new ideas, new perspectives, a new understanding of yourself.”

Julie Curtiss quoted in Get The Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker

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Q: Are there any artists whose work you particularly admire? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

Henri Matisse: Forms in Freedom at the National Art Center Tokyo

A: Among historical painters, I adore Henri Matisse and André Derain, for their striking compositions and bold use of colors.  Among living photographers, I am most fascinated by the Pictures Generation, namely, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Sandy Skoglund, and Gregory Crewdson.  I am drawn to these photographers, I think, because my earliest pastel painting series involved staged photography. 

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Pearls from artists* # 629

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.

I kept coming back to [Ellen] Dissanayake. She’s for banning the word art altogether on the grounds it’s uselessly vague, and argues we shouldn’t treat art as a thing but as a behavior. Art, she claims, occurs anytime we take ordinary things and transform them into extraordinary experiences through a process she calls “making special.” Making special happens when words turn into poetry, flesh gets painted for a shaman’s ceremony, a B-flat meets a middle G to form the tune in a Peking opera. I liked her definition, which seemed less arbitrary than others I’d read and didn’t turn up its nose at blockbuster movies or Super Bowl halftime shows – which Dissanayake calls “the arts of our time.” As she sees it, art results from several key “operations” … Artists repeat… formalize… exaggerate… elaborate… and manipulate expectation… Break dancing, leading a tea ceremony, designing Grand Theft Auto – to Dissanayake, it’s art, art, and more art.

Bianca Bosker in Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See

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Travel photo of the month*

Autumn in Alexandria, VA

*favorite travel photos that have not yet appeared in this blog

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Pearls from artists* # 628

“Conundrum,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 38” x 58” image, 50” x 70” framed

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Down the rabbit hole of my research, I’d stumbled into an odd conundrum: Even though art experts can’t agree on what art is, a large number of them are convinced that making and experiencing art is an innate human impulse. It’s not a learned pastime we dreamt up once we got bored of staring at blank walls or figured out how to live past age twenty, but a biological predisposition that has helped our species survive. (One we may share with songbirds, parrots, whales, and other animals that have their own “aesthetic culture,” writes evolutionary biologist Richard O. Prom.) One survival-of-the-most-artistic hypothesis contends that art is our version of peacock feathers: An extravagant, frivolous display by which Paleolithic humans showed potential mates that they were fit enough to hunt and gather and have time left-over to paint warty pigs. Another theory is that our art-inclined ancestors survived, thrived, and reproduced because making art offered a dress rehearsal for grappling with hostile conditions. (Nine-thousand-year-old Libyan rock paintings of spear-wielding figures sprinting after horned beasts come to mind.) The scholar Ellen Dissanayake, who’s dabbled in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, and art history, argues that art is a social glue that binds communities together and thus increases its members’ odds of survival. Also, she thinks the concept of “fine art” is a travesty that’s made us forget that “engaging with the arts is as universal, normal, and obvious in human behavior as sex or parenting.”

Bianca Bosker in Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See

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Q: What’s on the easel today?

Pastel paintings in progress

A: Work continues on “Harbinger” (left) and “Magisterial” (right).

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Pearls from artists* # 627

With friends at the 2024 Whitney Biennial!

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

“People are really open here and very dynamic, and they really respect hard work. So if you are going to shows, if you are part of the community, if you go do studio visits, if you’re interested in other people, you can create a community, said Julie [Curtiss]. “You can’t be a lazy artist in New York.”

Julie Curtiss quoted in Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker

Comments are welcome!

Q: What inspires you to create? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

Barbara’s Studio

A:  You remember the expression, to whom much is given, much is expected? Having discovered around the age of 5 or so that I could draw anything I could see, I know I have been given a tremendous gift. I remember being completely surprised as a kid to realize that not everyone can do this.

Therefore, I feel a kind of sacred obligation to develop my abilities as far as possible, to make the most of my short time on this earth. It is a thrill to see not only what is going to happen next in the studio, but also in my life. For example, I have become a world traveler. I wonder, which new country will I visit next?

Comments are welcome!