Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 125

Q: I have been always fascinated with the re-contexualizing power of Art and with the way some objects or even some concepts often gain a second life when they are “transduced” on a canvas or in a block of marble. So I would like to ask you if in your op

Barbara’s studio

A:  Certainly p ersonal experience is an indispensable and inseparable part of the creative process. For me art and life are one and I suspect that is true for most artists. When I look at each of my pastel paintings I can remember what was going on in my life at the time I made it. Each is a sort of veiled autobiography waiting to be decoded and in a way, each is also a time-capsule of the larger zeitgeist. It’s still a mystery how exactly this happens but all lived experience - what’s going on in the world, books I’m reading and thinking about, movies I’ve seen that have stayed with me, places I’ve visited, etc. - overtly and/or not so obviously, finds its way into the work. 

Life experience also explains why the work I do now is different from my work even five years ago.  In many ways I am not the same person.     

The inseparableness of art and life is one reason that travel is so important to my creative process.   Artists always seek new influences that will enrich and change our work.  To be an artist, indeed to be alive, is to never stop learning and growing.      

Comments are welcome!    

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Travel, Working methods Tagged: about, absolutely, alive, art, artists, ask, autobiography, block, books, canvas, certainly, change, concepts, creative, decoded, different, direct, disconnected, enrich, everything, exactly, experience, fascinated, finds, gain, going, growing, happens, indeed, indispensible, influences, inseparable, larger, learning, life, lived, made, marble, movies, mystery, never, objects, opinion, paintings, part, pastel, person, personal, places, power, process, re-contextualizing, reading, reason, remember, same, second, seen, somehow, stayed, still, stop, Studio, suspect, thinking, time capsule, transduced, travel, veiled, visited, waiting, ways, work, world, zeitgeist

Pearls from artists* # 118

Monet’s garden

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

MONET’S “WATERLILIES” (for Bill and Sonja) 

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

          I come again to see

the serene great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

          The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

          that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

          each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

Robert Hayden (1913 – 1980) in Art and Artists:  Poems

Comments are welcome!

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Creative Process, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes Tagged: "Art and Artists: Poems", "Waterlilies", aura, become, beheld, believes, dissolve, exist, eye, faith, fallout, flesh, forever, garden, illusive, iridescence, joy, known, light, lost, love, Monet, news, picture, poisons, refracting, Robert Hayden, Saigon, seen, Selma, serene, shadow, space, tears, through, time, today, world

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A:  I continue working on a large pastel painting called “Motley.”

Comments are welcome! 

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Motley", easel, large, pastel painting, progress, today, working

Pearls from artists* # 117

At work on a pastel painting

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

Rote practice is not deep practice.  Deep practice is slow, demanding, and uncomfortable.  To practice deeply is to live deliberately in a space that is uncomfortable but with the encouraging sense that progress can happen.  Deep practice is not rushed.  Constant critical feedback is essential.  Over time the effort alters neural pathways and increases skill.

Anne Bogart in What’s the Story:  Essays about art, theater, and storytelling

Comments are welcome!

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "What's the Story: Essays about art theater and storytelling, alters, Anne Bogart, constant, critical, deep, deeply, deliberately, demanding, effort, encouraging, essential, feedback, happen, live, neural, over, pastel painting, pathways, practice, progress, rote, rushed, sense, slow, space, time, uncomfortable, working

Q: Last week you spoke about what happens before you begin a pastel painting. Would you talk about how you actually make the work?

Beginning a new pastel painting

A:  I work on each pastel-on-sandpaper painting for approximately three months.  I try to be in my studio 7 to 8 hours a day, five days a week. 

I make thousands of creative decisions as I apply and layer soft pastels (I have thousands to choose from), blend them with my fingers, and mix new colors directly on the sandpaper.   A finished piece consists of up to 30 layers of soft pastel. 

My self-invented technique accounts for the vivid, intense color that often leads viewers of my originals to look very closely and ask, “What medium is this?”  I believe I am pushing soft pastel to its limits, using it in ways that no other artist has done before.

Comments are welcome!

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Gods and Monsters, Inspiration, Mexico, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: accounts, apply, approximately, artist, before, begin, believe, blend, choose, closely, colors, creative, decisions, directly, fingers, happens, intense, layer, leads, limits, look, make, medium, mix, originals, painting, pastel painting, pastel-on-sandpaper, pushing, sandpaper, self-invented, soft pastels, spoke, Studio, talk, technique, thousands, using, viewers, vivid, ways

Pearls from artists* # 116

Preliminary sketch

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

What is the point of all the discipline, hard work, and training?  What does the training and preparation have to do with rehearsing a play and with performance?  The training and the discipline and the sweating and the study and the memorizing are not the end point, but rather the entry.  The preparation is what gives one the permission to take up space and make wild, surprising, and untamed choices.  In the quest for artistic freedom and agency it is impossible to walk into a rehearsal room uninhibited, unburdened.  We are generally chained down by habits and assumptions and by fear of the new.  Permission is what we earn by the sweat, training, preparatory work and dedication.

Anne Bogart in What’s the Story:  Essays in art, theater, and storytelling

Comments are welcome! 

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "What's the Story: Essays about art theater and storytelling, agency, Anne Bogart, artistic, assumptions, chained, choices, dedication, discipline, down, earn, end point, entry, fear, freedom, generally, gives, habits, hard work, impossible, memorizing, new, pearls from artists, performance, permission, play, point, preliminary, preparation, preparatory, quest, rehearsal, rehearsing, room, sketch, space, study, surprising, sweat, sweating, take up, training, unburdened, uninhibited, walk, what, wild, work

Q: Can you talk a little bit about your process? What happens before you even begin a pastel painting?

Barbara in Bali (far right)

A:  My process is extremely slow and labor-intensive. 

First, there is foreign travel – often to Mexico, Guatemala or someplace in Asia – to find the cultural objects – masks, carved wooden animals, paper mâché figures, and toys – that are my subject matter.  I search the local markets, bazaars, and mask shops for these folk art objects. I look for things that are old, that look like they have a history, and were probably used in religious festivals of some kind. Typically, they are colorful, one-of-a- kind objects that have lots of inherent personality. How they enter my life and how I get them back to my New York studio is an important part of my art-making practice. 

My working methods have changed dramatically over the nearly thirty years that I have been an artist. My current process is a much simplified version of how I used to work.  As I pared down my imagery in the current series, “Black Paintings,” my creative process quite naturally pared down, too. 

One constant is that I have always worked in series with each pastel painting leading quite naturally to the next.  Another is that I always set up a scene, plan exactly how to light and photograph it, and work with a 20″ x 24″ photograph as the primary reference material. 

In the setups I look for eye-catching compositions and interesting colors, patterns, and shadows.  Sometimes I make up a story about the interaction that is occurring between the “actors,” as I call them.

In the “Domestic Threats” series I photographed the scene with a 4″ x 5″ Toyo Omega view camera.  In my “Gods and Monsters” series I shot rolls of 220 film using a Mamiya 6. I still like to use an old analog camera for fine art work, although I have been rethinking this practice.   

Nowadays the first step is to decide which photo I want to make into a painting (currently I have a backlog of photographs to choose from) and to order a 19 1/2″ x 19 1/2″ image (my Mamiya 6 shoots square images) printed on 20″ x 24″ paper.  They recently closed, but I used to have the prints made at Manhattan Photo on West 20th Street in New York.  Now I go to Duggal.  Typically I have in mind the next two or three paintings that I want to create.

Once I have the reference photograph in hand, I make a preliminary tonal charcoal sketch on a piece of white drawing paper.  The sketch helps me think about how to proceed and points out potential problem areas ahead. 

Only then am I ready to start actually making the painting. 

Comments are welcome!    

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Bali and Java, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Domestic Threats, Gods and Monsters, Guatemala, Inspiration, Mexico, Pastel Painting, Photography, Travel, Working methods Tagged: "Black Paintings", "Gods and Monsters", 19 1/2" x 19 1/2", 20" x 24", 220 film, 4' x 5", actors, actually, ahead, although, always, analog, animals, another, areas, art-making, artist, Asia, backlog, bazaars, begin, between, call, camera, carved, changed, charcoal, choose, closed, colorful, colors, compositions, constant, create, creative, cultural, current, currently, decide, Domestic Threats, down, dramatically, drawing, Duggal, enter, extremely, eye-catching, festivals, figures, fine art, first, folk art, foreign, Guatemala, hand, happens, history, image, imagery, important, inherent, interaction, interesting, labor intensive, lately, life, light, local, look, make, making, Mamiya 6, Manhattan Photo, markets, mask, material, matter, Mexico, mind, naturally, nearly, New York, next, nowadays, objects, occurring, old, one-of-a-kind, only, order, paper, paper mache, pared, part, pastel painting, patterns, personality, photo, photograph, photographed, piece, plan, points, potential, practice, preliminary, printed, prints, probably, problem, proceed, process, quite, ready, recently, reference, religious, rethinking, rolls, scene, search, series, set up, setups, shadows, shoots, shops, shot, simplified, sketch, slow, someplace, sometimes, square, start, step, story, subject, then, things, think, thirty, tonal, Toyo-Omega, toys, travel, typically, version, view camera, West 20th Street, white, wooden, work, worked, working methods, years

Pearls from artists* # 115

 

Q: You took classes at The Art League School in Alexandria, VA in the late eighties studying intensely with Lisa Semerad and Diane Tesler. How have these experiences impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes wonder

 

Barbara’s studio

A: From studying with Lisa and Diane I gained an excellent technical foundation and developed my ability to draw and depict just about anything in soft pastel.  They were both extremely effective teachers and I worked hard in their classes.  I probably got my work ethic from them.  Without Diane and Lisa I doubt I would have gained the necessary skills nor the confidence to move to New York to pursue my art career.

Needless to say, I believe developing excellent technical skills is paramount.  Artists can, and should, go ahead and break the rules later, but they won’t be able to make strong work, expressing what they want, without a firm foundation.  Once you have the skills, you can focus on the things that really make your work come alive and speak to an appreciative audience.   

Comments are welcome!    

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: ability, able, ahead, Alexandria_VA, alive, anything, appreciative, artist, artistic, artworks, audience, believe, break, career, certain, classes, confidence, creativity, currently, depict, developed, developing, Diane Tesler, disciplines, doubt, draw, effective, either, ethic, excellent, experience, expressing, extremely, firm, focus, formal, foundation, gained, impacted, intensely, kind, later, LIsa Semerad, make, move, necessary, needless, New York, paramount, probably, produce, pursue, rules, skills, soft pastel, sometimes, speak, stifle, strong, Studio, studying, teachers, technical, The Art League School, things, think, training, want, without, wonder, work, young

Q: You took classes at The Art League School in Alexandria, VA in the late eighties studying intensely with Lisa Semerad and Diane Tesler. How have these experiences impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes wonder

 

Barbara’s studio

A: From studying with Lisa and Diane I gained an excellent technical foundation and developed my ability to draw and depict just about anything in soft pastel.  They were both extremely effective teachers and I worked hard in their classes.  I probably got my work ethic from them.  Without Diane and Lisa I doubt I would have gained the necessary skills nor the confidence to move to New York to pursue my art career.

Needless to say, I believe developing excellent technical skills is paramount.  Artists can, and should, go ahead and break the rules later, but they won’t be able to make strong work, expressing what they want, without a firm foundation.  Once you have the skills, you can focus on the things that really make your work come alive and speak to an appreciative audience.   

Comments are welcome!    

Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: ability, able, ahead, Alexandria_VA, alive, anything, appreciative, artist, artistic, artworks, audience, believe, break, career, certain, classes, confidence, creativity, currently, depict, developed, developing, Diane Tesler, disciplines, doubt, draw, effective, either, ethic, excellent, experience, expressing, extremely, firm, focus, formal, foundation, gained, impacted, intensely, kind, later, LIsa Semerad, make, move, necessary, needless, New York, paramount, probably, produce, pursue, rules, skills, soft pastel, sometimes, speak, stifle, strong, Studio, studying, teachers, technical, The Art League School, things, think, training, want, without, wonder, work, young