Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 11

Pearls from artists* # 626

“Wise One,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” image, 70” x 50” 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.

This is why, when writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than at, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life is filled with predictable uncertainties, but with the awareness that we are always starting over. That everything we will ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know – if we know anything at all – is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job – as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy – of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt – spectacularly, brazenly – into the unknown.

Dani Shapiro in Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

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Q: What was it like having a documentary made about you? (Question from Culture Focus Magazine)

With Jennifer Cox at the 2023 Newport Beach Film Festival!

A: I loved the whole experience!  Before this happened, I had wanted to make a film for ten years or so, ever since Brainard Carey, an artists’ coach, suggested the idea when I told him about my unusual background. Often I hear from artist friends and others that my life story is truly inspiring. Finally being able to make “Barbara Rachko: True Grit” and now to share it with a wider audience is a dream come true! Jennifer Cox, our director, and Annette Apitz, our co-producer, were ideal collaborators over the fifteen months it took to make the film.  

It is truly gratifying to hear so many positive responses from viewers of our film. Surprisingly, the film has even gone on to have a life in film festivals.  “Barbara Rachko:  True Grit” made it’s World Premier at the prestigious 2023 Newport Beach Film Festival in Orange County, California, where it received both the Audience Award and the Best in category Award for Art, Architecture, and Design.  In addition, we earned Honorable Mention at the 2023 International Fine Arts Film Festival Santa Barbara and were recognized as an Award Nominee at the 2023 Montreal Women Film Festival.

To date in 2024 our film has screened at New Plaza Cinema on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and at Noise Media Art Fair in Vienna, Austria. I think I speak for the filmmakers and myself when I say, “Barbara Rachko:  True Grit” has exceeded all of our expectations!

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJWLy84kXI0

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Pearls from artists* # 625

With “Wise One” (left) and “The Moralist”

*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 artist not equipped with the necessary arrogance will be repeatedly sidetracked or subverted by the agendas of others. He will lack a sufficient sense of purpose, will frequently stall and block, and will bring a nagging passivity to his art career. His resolve to do great art may remain a potent idea only, a kind of unexplained force in his body. He is likely to accomplish much less than he otherwise might, support others rather than find support for himself, attempt the small rather than the large, and rebound less well from rejection.

The self-centered artist, on the other hand, is challenged to remember that he is neither god nor Superman, but a human being with human limitations. He hasn’t the time to turn every idea into a book, the ability to top each work with a greater one, the energy to toil ceaselessly at his art, nor the right to trample others as he pursues his goals. If he mistakes or oversteps these limits he will put himself in harm’s way and may find himself struck down by his own obsessional energy, by burnout, by depression, by self-abuse, or by the angry complaints of those whose rights he has cavalierly trampled.

Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

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Travel photo of the month*

St. Malo, Brittany, France

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

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Pearls from artists* # 624

View from New York City

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

Van Gogh’s drawings show a truly remarkable improvement over the course of the two years he set aside to intensely practice drawing. At the start of that period his sketches look clumsy and amateurish. With great ardor, thoughtfulness, and effort – by manifesting his creativity, in short – at the end of those two years Van Gogh was producing drawings that showed not only that he had mastered elements of technique but also that he had educated himself in ways that moved him far ahead of his classically trained peers.

Van Gogh’s progress excites the artist. It seems to hold the clear implication that by acting creatively the artist may significantly increase his talents or make manifest significant talent he didn’t know he possessed. Maybe a brilliant novel is within his grasp. Maybe he can achieve a breakthrough in the visual arts. Maybe he can play his instrument like a god.

Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

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Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I am working on a small 26” x 20” pastel painting called, “Harbinger” that, for once, is coming together rather quickly.

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Pearls from artists* # 623

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.

At the time [the Renaissance], Bologna was unique in championing the professions of women. The home of Europe’s oldest university, which had supported female students since the thirteenth century, the city considered women artists as integral to its development. Praised by scholars, written about by biographers and adored by the locals, they were also supported by patrons of all social classes (from bankers to barbers), creating a varied culture of artistic patronage. (By contrast, in Florence and Naples, commissioning was reserved for select noble families.). Women were also encouraged to sign their work, as well as to paint self-portraits for the purpose of being known and, most importantly, remembered. No wonder scholars have recorded a staggering sixty-eight women artists working in the city between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

These notable exceptions remind us that women have always been perfectly capable of being artists. But while there could have been an abundance of women working at this time, in reality female artists were an absolute rarity, seen as ‘tokens’ rather than pioneers. (After de Rossi’s death [in 1530], no female sculptor is mentioned in the city’s records for 200 years.). And little knowledge remains of those working during the Renaissance period. Most of what we know has been passed down by male scholars and through legal documents, rarely from the women themselves.

Katy Hessel in The Story of Art Without Men

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Q: When did you begin drawing and painting? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

In the studio

A: This is a long story because my path to becoming a professional artist has been unusually circuitous.  

I  grew up in a blue collar family in suburban New Jersey. My parents were both first-generation Americans and no one in my family had gone to college. I was a smart kid, who showed some artistic talent in kindergarten and earlier. At the age of 6, my sister, my cousin, and I enrolled in Saturday morning painting classes at the studio of a local artist. I continued the classes for about 8 years and became a fairly adept oil painter.

At the age of 15 my father decided that art was not a serious pursuit – he called it a hobby, not a profession – and abruptly stopped paying for my Saturday morning lessons.  Unfortunately, there were no artists or suitable role models in my family. So with  neither financial nor moral support to pursue art, I turned my attention to very different interests.

Cut to ten years later. When I was 25, I earned my private pilot’s license and spent the next two years amassing other flying licenses and ratings, culminating in a Boeing-727 flight engineer’s certificate. 

At 29, I joined the Navy. By then I was an accomplished civilian pilot with thousands of flight hours so I expected to fly jets. However, in the early 1980s women were not allowed in combat.  There were very few women Navy pilots and those few were restricted to training male pilots. There were no women pilots landing on aircraft carriers.

In the mid-1980s I was in my early 30s, a lieutenant on active duty in the Navy, working a soul-crushing job as a computer analyst on the midnight shift in a Pentagon basement. It was literally and figuratively the lowest point of my life.  I was completely bored and miserable. 

Remembering the joyful Saturdays of my youth when I had taken art classes with a local New Jersey painter, I enrolled in a drawing class at the Art League School in Alexandria, Virginia. Initially I wasn’t very good, but it was wonderful to be around other women  and a world away from the mentality of the Pentagon. I was having fun again! I enrolled in more classes and became a very motivated full-time art student who worked nights at the Pentagon. As I studied and improved my skills, I quickly discovered my preferred medium – soft pastel on sandpaper. 

Although I knew I had found my calling, for more than a year I agonized over whether or not to leave the financial security of a Navy paycheck.  Finally I did make up my mind and resigned my commission, effective on September 30, 1989. With Bryan’s (my then boyfriend’s) support, I left the Navy to devote my time to making art.

I’m probably one of the few people who can name THE day I became a professional artist! That day was October 1, 1989. Fortunately, I have never needed another job. I remained in the Navy Reserve for the next 14 years, working primarily at the Pentagon for two days each month and two weeks each year. I commuted by train to Washington, DC after I moved to Manhattan in 1997.  Finally on November 1, 2003, I officially retired as a Navy Commander.

Life as a self-employed professional artist is endlessly varied, fulfilling, and interesting. I have never regretted my decision to pursue art full-time.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 631

Working. Photo: Jennifer Cox

*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 could see motion when I looked at Julie’s work. Her hand had moved there, in that way. She’d chosen this blue over that one. Seeing the act of creation – the way a work doesn’t come out fully formed but grows by fits and starts – made we aware of how delicate and fragile an artwork was. How improbable it was that it existed. Someone had agonized over this square inch. They’d poured themselves into that flink of a line. I thought of the bewildering piles of supplies I’d seen in studios: Vaseline, turpentine, wax, Q-tips, chopsticks, marble dust. It’s not magic that makes a piece. All the Hollywood visions of possessed artists throwing pieces together in a trance-like state overlooked the fact that this was work. Each piece may have started with an idea, but there was more to it than that. “An idea is not a painting,” Julie said, as she worked, her nose practically grazing the canvas. She was already thinking ahead to how she’d fix the brushyness of the tights, maybe go over the shoes again. The soul of the artwork needed a body. Seeing Julie work gave me a path to follow into the piece.

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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Start/Finish of “Maestro,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”

Start

Finish

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