Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 130
July 19, 2014
Q: How long does it take you to complete a pastel-on-sandpaper painting?
Barbara’s studio
A: Mine is a slow and labor-intensive process. First, there is foreign travel to find the cultural objects – masks, carved wooden animals, paper mâché figures, and toys – that are my subject matter. If they are heavy I ship them home.
Next comes planning exactly how to photograph them, lighting and setting everything up, and shooting a roll of 220 film with my Mamiya 6 camera. I still like to use an analog camera for my fine art work, although I am rethinking this. I have the film developed, decide which image to use, and order a 20” x 24” reference photograph from Manhattan Photo on West 20th Street.
Then I am ready to start. I work on each pastel-on-sandpaper painting for approximately three months. I am in my studio 7 to 8 hours a day, five days a week. During that time I make thousands of creative decisions as I apply and layer soft pastels (I have 8 tables-worth 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.
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Guatemala, Inspiration, Mexico, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Travel, Working methods Tagged: "What medium is this?", 20" x 24" photo, 220 film, accounts, analog, apply, approximately, artist, ask, believe, blend, camera, carved wooden animals, choose, closely, color, colors, complete, consists, creative, cultural objects, decide, decisions, developed, directly, easily, everything, exactly, figures, film, fine art, fingers, finished, foreign, heavy, image, intense, labor intensive, layer, layers, leads, lighting, limits, look, Mamiya 6, Manhattan Photo, masks, mix, order, originals, painting, paper mache, pastel-on-sandpaper, photograph, piece, planning, process, pushing, ready, reference, rethinking, roll, sandpaper, self-invented, setting, ship, shooting, slow, soft pastels, start, Studio, subject matter, tables-worth, technique, thousands, toys, travel, using, viewers, vivid, West 20th Street, work
July 16, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 100
Barbara’s studio
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I think it’s terribly important that people have always made structures that are better and more rigorous and more demanding than we as an audience can live up to for every single moment. Serious art should be better than you are. I think my plays are more lucid, more rigorous, than I, Richard, am in my life. I’m a stumble bum like all the rest of us. Create art that is better than you are able to manifest in normal life.
Richard Foreman in Anne Bogart’s Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Gods and Monsters, Inspiration, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews ", Anne Bogart, art, audience, better, create, demanding, important, life, live, lucid, made, manifest, moment, normal, people, plays, Richard Foreman, rigorous, serious, single, structures, Studio, stumble bum, terribly
July 12, 2014
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Pastel painting in progress
A: I am working on an untitled small, 20″ x 26″, pastel-on-sandpaper painting.
Filed under: Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: painting, pastel-on-sandpaper, Untitled, work in progress, working
July 9, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 99
Barbara’s studio
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I think there are two very interesting stages in creative work. One is confusion and one is boredom. They generally both mean that there’s a big fish swimming under the water. As Rilke said, “Live the questions.” And not judge that there’s something wrong about confusion, because the people who are working, say, on the cure for leprosy – they work for years and years in a state of confusion, and very often they don’t find the cure. They find something completely different. But they keep living the question. Confusion is absolutely essential to the creative process. If there was no confusion, why do it? I always feel that all of us have questions we’re asking all our lives, for our work, and if we ever found the answer, we’d stop working. We wouldn’t need to work anymore.
Boredom – if you’ve ever been in therapy, you’d know that when you start getting bored, that’s really important. The therapist sits up; there’s something going on, because the wall that you come against – that’s where the real gold is. It’s really precious.
Andre Gregory (from My Dinner with Andre) in Anne Bogart, Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews
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: "Conversations with Anne: Twenty-four Interviews ", "Live the questions.", absolutely, against, Andre Gregory, Anne Bogart, answer, anymore, asking, big fish, bored, boredom, completely, confusion, creative, cure, different, essential, feel, found, generally, gold, important, interesting, judge, leprosy, living, mean, people, precious, process, questions, Rilke, something, stages, Studio, swimming, therapist, therapy, think, under, wall, water, work, wrong, years
July 5, 2014
Q: Who is your favorite artist and why?
Catalogue of Matisse’s late work
A: I admire the work of many artists, but if I have to choose only one then I’d say Matisse. Whenever there is a Matisse exhibition in New York, I try to see it at least once. Many years ago I read Hillary Spurling’s definitive two-volume biography (The Unknown Matisse, published 1998, and Matisse the Master, 2005) and became fascinated with how his life unfolded, how Matisse struggled and overcame daunting obstacles in order to make art, and how his work continued to grow and evolve throughout his long life.
I believe that Matisse and I are kindred souls in three respects: we both came from unpromising beginnings (he from a textile family in northern France, me from a blue collar family in New Jersey), our fathers did not support our interest in becoming artists, and he famously worked in series (I am well into my third series).
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Inspiration, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio Tagged: "Matisse the Master", "The Unknown Matisse", artist, becoming, beginnings, biography, blue collar, catalogue, continued, daunting, definitive, evolve, family, famously, fascinated, fathers, favorite, France, grow, Hillary Spurling, interst, kindred, late work, life, make art, Matisse, New Jersey, northern, obstacles, published, respects, series, souls, struggled, support, textile, two-volume, unfolded, unpromising, worked
July 2, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 98
Teleidoscope
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem; it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction. But the relationship between reading and writing is rarely so clear-cut…
To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a different harbinger of personal failure, some innocent genius chosen by us for reasons having to do with what we see as our own inadequacies. The only remedy to this I have found is to read a writer whose work is entirely different from another, though not necessarily more like your own – a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.
Francine Prose in Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Working methods Tagged: "Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for Poeple Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them", aesthetic, another, approach, chosen, clear-cut, dead in your tracks, difference, different, entirely, failure, fiction, found, Francine Prose, fresh, genius, harbinger, house of art, inadequacies, innocent, iPad, light, making, meet, method, necessarily, personal, philosophical, photo, problem, rarely, reading, reasons, relationship, remedy, remind, rooms, start, stop, suggest, Teleidoscope, thinking, truthful, unflattering, work of art, writers, writing
June 29, 2014
An Artist's Creative Process...
My working methods have changed dramatically over the years with my current process being a much-simplified version of how I used to work.
In other words, as I pared down my imagery in the "Black Paintings," my process quite naturally pared down, too.
One constant is that I have always worked in series with each pastel painting leading quite logically to the next.
Another is that I always have set up a scene, lit and photographed it, and worked with a 20" x 24" photograph as the primary reference material.
In the "Domestic Threats" series I shot with a 4" x 5" view camera.
Nowadays the first step is to decide which photo I want to make into a painting (currently I have a backlog of images to choose from) and to order a 19 1/2" x 19 1/2" image (my Mamiya 6 shoots square images and uses film) printed on 20" x 24" paper.
I get the print made at Manhattan Photo on West 20th Street in New York.
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.
For example, in this photograph I had originally thought about creating a vertical painting, but changed to horizontal format after discovering spatial problems in my sketch.
Also, I decided to make a small painting now because it has been two years since I last worked in a smaller (than my usual 38" x 58") size.
I am re-using the photograph on which "Epiphany" is based. Using a photograph a second time lets me see how my working methods have evolved over time.
Comments are welcome!
www.barbararachkoscoloreddust.com
June 28, 2014
Q: What does your creative process look like when you are ready to begin a new painting?
Preliminary sketch
A: My working methods have changed dramatically over the years with my current process being a much-simplified version of how I used to work. In other words as I pared down my imagery in the “Black Paintings,” my process quite naturally pared down, too.
One constant is that I have always worked in series with each pastel painting leading quite logically to the next. Another is that I always have set up a scene, lit and photographed it, and worked with a 20″ x 24″ photograph as the primary reference material. In the “Domestic Threats” series I shot with a 4″ x 5″ view camera. Nowadays the first step is to decide which photo I want to make into a painting (currently I have a backlog of images to choose from) and to order a 19 1/2″ x 19 1/2″ image (my Mamiya 6 shoots square images and uses film) printed on 20″ x 24″ paper. I get the print made at Manhattan Photo on West 20th Street in New York. 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. For example, in the photograph above I had originally thought about creating a vertical painting, but changed to horizontal format after discovering spatial problems in my sketch.
Also, I decided to make a small painting now because it has been two years since I last worked in a smaller (than my usual 38″ x 58″) size. I am re-using the photograph on which “Epiphany” is based. Using a photograph a second time lets me see how my working methods have evolved over time.
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Black Paintings", "Epiphany", 38" x 58", above, backlog, based, changed, charcoal, constant, create, current, currently, decide, discovering, dramatically, drawing, evolved, example, film, format, horizontal, imagery, images, in hand, logically, Mamiya 6, Manhattan Photo, material, mind, much-simplified, naturally, New York, originally, painting, paper, pared down, pastel, photographed, photographs, piece, points, potential, preliminary, primary, print, printed, problems, proceed, re-using, ready, reference, scene, second, series, size, sketch, small, spatial, square, step, thought, time, tonal, typically, version, vertical, West 20th Street, white, worked, working methods, years
June 25, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 97
“No Cure for Insomnia,” pastel on sandpaper, 58″ x 38″
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
“Art should be independent of all clap-trap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like,” he wrote in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.
Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an “Arrangement in Grey and Black.” Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?
James McNeill Whistler quoted in Whistler: The Enraged Genius by Christopher Benfey in The New York Review of Books, June 5, 2014
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Domestic Threats, Inspiration, Painting in General, Pearls from Artists, Quotes Tagged: "Arrangement in Grey and Black", "New York Review of Books", "No Cure for Insomnia", "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies", "Whistler: The Enraged Genius", alone, appeal, art, artistic, care, Christopher Benfey, clap-trap, confounding, devotion, ear, emotions, entirely, exhibited, eye, foreign, identity, independent, interesting, James McNeill Whistler, love, mother, pastel-on-sandpaper, patriotism, picture, pity, portrait, public, Royal Academy, sense, stand
June 21, 2014
Q: Would you speak about your first trip to Mexico?
With an amate tree at Chalcatzingo
A: In the early 90’s my late husband, Bryan, and I made our first trip to Oaxaca and to Mexico City. At the time I had become fascinated with the Mexican “Day of the Dead” celebrations so our trip was timed to see them firsthand. Along with busloads of other tourists, we visited several cemeteries in small Oaxacan towns. The indigenous people tending their ancestor’s graves were so dignified and so gracious, even with so many mostly-American tourists tromping around on a sacred night, that I couldn’t help being taken with these beautiful people and their beliefs. From Oaxaca we traveled to Mexico City, where again I was entranced, but this time by the rich and ancient history. On that first trip to Mexico we visited the National Museum of Anthropology, where I was introduced to the fascinating story of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations (it is still one of my favorite museums in the world); the ancient city of Teotihuacan, which the Aztecs discovered as an abandoned city and then occupied as their own; and the Templo Mayor, the historic center of the Aztec empire, infamous as a place of human sacrifice. I was astounded! Why had I never learned in school about Mexico, this highly developed cradle of Western civilization in our own hemisphere, when so much time had been devoted to the cultures of Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere? When I returned home to Virginia I began reading everything I could find about ancient Mexican civilizations, including the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya. This first trip to Mexico opened up a whole new world and was to profoundly influence my future work. I would return there many more times, most recently this past March to study Olmec art and culture.
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Photography, Travel Tagged: abandoned, amate tree, American, ancestors, ancient, around, art, astounded, Aztec, beautiful, beliefs, Bryan, busloads, celebrations, cemeteries, center, Chalcatzingo, city, cradle, culture, cultures, Day of the Dead, devoted, dignified, discovered, Egypt, elsewhere, empire, entranced, fascinated, fascinating, favorite, firsthand, gracious, graves, Greece, hemisphere, historic, history, home, human, husband, indigenous, infamous, influence, introduced, learned, Maya, Mesoamerican, Mexico, Mexico City, Mixtec, National Museum of Anthropology, night, Oaxaca, occupied, Olmec, people, profoundly, reading, rich, sacred, sacrifice, school, several, story, study, Templo Mayor, tending, Teotihuacan, timed, tourists, towns, trip, tromping, Virginia, visited, Western, world, Zapotec
