Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 134
March 8, 2014
Q: What is your earliest visual memory?

Arizona road
A: I remember being in a crib at the house where I lived with my parents and sister, a two bedroom Cape Cod in Clifton, New Jersey. I must have been about two or three years old. The crib was next to a wall and I remember putting my right leg through the slats to push against it and rock my crib. I spent hours looking at the space age wallpaper in the room, which depicted ringed planets and flying sci-fi space men. My parents had recently bought the house and the bedroom’s previous occupant had been a boy. This was in the 1950s and I dare say, the wallpaper was very much of its era!
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Creative Process, Inspiration, Travel Tagged: 1950s, Arizona, bedroom, bought, Cape Cod, Clifton, crib, earliest, era, Flying, hours, house, leg, lived, looked, looking, memory, New Jersey, occupant, online, parents, planets, previous, push, recently, Road, room, sci-fi, sister, slats, space age, space men, spending, spent, visual, wall, wallpaper








March 5, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 81
“Poker Face,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
* 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.
The creative process remains as baffling and unpredictable to me today as it did when I began my journey over forty years ago. On the one hand, it seems entirely logical – insight building on insight; figures from my past, the culture, and everyday life sparking scenes and images on canvas; and all of it – subject, narrative, theme – working together with gesture, form, light to capture deeply felt experience. But in real time the process is a blur, a state that precludes consciousness or any kind of rational thinking. When I’m working well, I’m lost in the moment, painting quickly and intuitively, reacting to forms on the canvas, allowing their meaning to reveal itself to me. In every painting I make I’m looking for some kind of revelation, something I didn’t see before. If it surprises me, hopefully it will surprise the viewer, too.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Quotes, Working methods Tagged: "Bad Boy: MY Life on and off the Canvas", "Poker Face", allowing, baffling, began, blur, building, canvas, capture, consciousness, creative, culture, deeply, entirely, Eric Fischl, everyday, experience, felt, figures, form, gesture, hopefully, images, insight, intuitively, itself, journey, kind, life, light, logical, looking, lost, make, meaning, Michael Stone, moment, narrative, painting, past, precludes, process, quickly, rational, reacting, real time, reveal, revelation, scenes, soft pastel on sandpaper, sparking, state, subject, surprises, theme, thinking, today, together, viewer, working








March 1, 2014
Q: I just got home from my first painting experience… three hours and I am exhausted! Yet you, Barbara, build up as many as 30 layers of pastel, concentrate on such intricate detail, and work on a single painting for months. How do you do it?

Barbara’s studio
A: The short answer is that I absolutely love making art in my studio and on the best days I barely even notice time going by!
Admittedly, it’s a hard road. Pursuing life as an artist takes a very special and rare sort of person. Talent and having innate gifts are a given, merely the starting point. We must possess a whole cluster of characteristics and be unwavering in displaying them. We are passionate, hard-working, smart, devoted, sensitive, self-starting, creative, hard-headed, resilient, curious, persistent, disciplined, stubborn, inner-directed, tireless, strong, and on and on. Into the mix add these facts. We need to be good business people. Even if we are, we are unlikely to make much money. We are not respected as a profession. People often misunderstand us: at best they ignore us, at worst they insult our work and us, saying we are lazy, crazy, and more.
The odds are stacked against any one individual having the necessary skills and stamina to withstand it all. So many artists give up, deciding it’s too tough and just not worth it, and who can blame them? This is why I believe artists who persevere over a lifetime are true heroes. It’s why I do all I can to help my peers. Ours is an extremely difficult life – it’s impossible to overstate this – and each of us finds our own intrinsic rewards in the work itself. Otherwise there is no reason to stick with it. Art is a calling and for those of us who are called, the work is paramount. We build our lives around the work until all else becomes secondary and falls away. We are in this for the duration.
In my younger days everything I tried in the way of a career eventually became boring. Now with nearly thirty years behind me as a working artist, I can still say, “I am never bored in the studio!” It’s difficult to put into words why this is true, but I know that I would not want to spend my time on this earth doing anything else. How very fortunate that I do not have to do so!
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, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods Tagged: admittedly, art, artist, away, believe, blame, bored, business, calling, career, characteristics, cluster, crazy, creative, curious, deciding, detail, devoted, difficult, disciplined, displaying, duration, earth, exhausted, experience, extremely, facts, falls, fellow, find, fortunate, gifts, give up, given, hard-headed, hard-working, heroes, home, ignore, impossible, individual, innate, inner-directed, intricate, intrinsic, layers, lazy, life, love, making art, mention, misunderstand, mix, money, necessary, odds, overstate, painting, paramount, passionate, pastel, people, persevere, persistent, person, point, possess, possessing, profession, pursuing, rare, resilient, respected, rewards, ridicule, secondary, self-starting, sensitive, skills, smart, special, stacked, stamina, starting, strong, stubborn, Studio, talent, time, tireless, tough, true, unwavering, withstand, work, worse








February 26, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 80

New York, NY
* 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.
Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting ["The Goldfinch," 1654, by C. Fabritius] has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life – whatever else it is – is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time – so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.
Donna Tartt in The Goldfinch
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, The West Village Tagged: "The Goldfinch", across, beautiful, bow, bright, brilliantly, C. Fabritius, cesspool, cruel, death, despair, disaster, Donna Tartt, dying, exists, eyes, fate, feel, fire, followed, generation, glad, glory, grovel, hand, hearts, here, history, ignominiously, immerse, immortal, immutable, insofar, keeping, life, literally, lost, love, lovers, maybe, midst, nature, New York, next, non-existent, oblivion, open, organic, ourselves, painting, passing, people, preserve, privilege, pulled, random, reader, rise, room, save, serious, short, sing, sink, small, something, sought, standing, straight, talk, task, teaches, time, touch, urgently, wade, whatever, wins, wreck








February 22, 2014
Q: How do you feel about accepting commissions?
“Reunion,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″, 1990
A: By the time I left the Navy in 1989 to devote myself to making art, I had begun a career as a portrait painter. I needed to make money, this was the only way I could think of to do so, and I had perfected the craft of creating photo-realistic portraits in pastel. It worked for a little while.
A year later I found myself feeling bored and frustrated for many reasons. I didn’t like having to please a client because their concerns generally had little to do with art. Once I ensured that the portrait was a good (and usually flattering) likeness, there was no more room for experimentation, growth, or creativity. I believed (and still do) that I could never learn all there was to know about soft pastel. I wanted to explore color and composition and take this under-appreciated medium as far as possible. It seemed likely that painting portraits would not allow me to accomplish this. Al so, I tended to underestimate the amount of time needed to make a portrait and charged too small a fee.
So I decided commissioned portraits were not for me and made the last one in 1990 (above). I feel fortunate to have the freedom to create work that does not answer to external concerns.
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Photography Tagged: "Reunion", accomplish, art, believed, bored, career, charged, client, color, commissions, composition, concerns, craft, create, creativity, devote, ensuring, experimentation, explore, external, feeling, flattering, fortunate, frustrated, growth, learn, likeness, medium, money, Navy, painter, particular, pastel, perfected, photo-realist, please, portraits, pronounce, reasons, room, time, under-appreciated, underestimate, work








February 19, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 79

Negombo, Sri Lanka
* 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.
“What’s to say? Great paintings – people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they’re reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But … if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey, kid. Yes, you.” Fingertip gliding over the faded-out photo – the conservator’s touch, a-touch-without-touching, a communion wafer’s space between the surface and his forefinger. “An individual heart-shock. Your dream … Vermeer’s dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum shop sees something else entire, and that’s not even to mention the people separated from us by time – four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we’re gone - it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it’ll never strike in any deep way at all – a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you… fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn’t be an object. It’d be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.”
Donna Tartt in The Goldfinch
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: Art in general, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Sri Lanka Tagged: "The Goldfinch", alleyway, angles, another, antiquaire, anybody, anything, around, art, art book, buying, catch, changes, city, coffee mugs, color, communion, consevator, count, crowds, day, dealer, deep, different, Donna Tartt, draw, dream, endlessly, enjoying, entire, everything, faded-out, fate, fateful, feel, fingertip, flock, fluid, following, forefinger, gliding, great, greeting card, heart, individual, kid, lady, liable, lifetime, like, love, lunch, majority, mankind, mention, mind, mouse pads, museum shop, museum-going, myself, nail, Negombo, object, objects, occur, painting, paintings, particular, people, perfectly, photo, piece, pieces, reason, recognizes, recur, remove, reproduced, say, secret, see, sepearated, sincere, snag, space, speaks, Sri Lanka, strike, surface, think, time, touch, touching, traipse, unique, universal, Vermeer, wafer, whisper, works








February 15, 2014
Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress
A: I continue to work on a pastel-on-sandpaper painting that I began some weeks ago. For now the working title is “Blinded,” which relates to the maroon and black shape on the main figure’s right eye. I haven’t yet figured out the deeper meaning of that shape.
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Blinded", black, deeper, easel, eye, figure, figured, main, maroon, meaning, painting, pastel-on-sandpaper, progress, relates, shape, today, work, working title








February 12, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 78

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.
To me, openings are never what you want them to be. The excitement, relief, anxiety, and anticipation are too much to process. There’s no apotheosis, no pinnacle, no turning point. It’s not like theater, where at the end of a performance people get up and applaud.
Nothing gets created at an opening. Nothing of artistic merit takes place. All of that important stuff happens in the studio, long before the exhibition, when you’re alone. For me, anyway, openings are something to get through, an ordeal to be endured. The bigger the event, the less I remember it. I pretty much walk in, and wherever I stop is where I stay. I paint a grin on my face so fixed that by the end of the evening my jaw is sore. I remember none of the conversations. I stand there shaking hands, blindly mouthing, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Then eventually April [Gornick, Fischl's wife] collects me and we leave.
If, on the other hand, you were to ask me what I remember about making the paintings in a show, that’s a different story. Imagine touching something, stroking it, jostling it, caressing it, and as you’re doing this, you are creating it. How you touched it is how it came into existence. Unlike other pleasures, where the feelings fade quickly as details become blurred, with paintings you remember everything. Within the details are all the bumps and the friction, the memory of when the creative instinct flowed, when you were distracted or lazy or working too hard. It’s all there on the canvas. When I look at my paintings again, years later, even, I remember it all – the victory laps and the scars.
Eric Fischl and Michael Stone in Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, New York, NY, Painting in General, Pastel Painting, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Bad Boy: MY Life on and off the Canvas", alone, anticipation, anxiety, anyway, apotheosis, applaud, April Gornick, artistic, bigger, blurred, bumps, canvas, caressing, collects, conversations, created, creating, creative, details, different, distracted, doing, end, endured, Eric Fischl, evening, event, eventually, everything, excitement, exhibition, existence, face, fade, feelings, fixed, flowed, frictions, grin, hands, imagine, important, instinct, jaw, jostling, lazy, leave, making, memory, merit, Michael Stone, nothing, opening, ordeal, paint, paintings, people, performance, pinnacle, place, pleasures, process, quickly, relief, remember, scars, shaking, show, something, sore, stand, stay, stop, story, stroking, Studio, stuff, thank you, theater, touched, touching, turning point, unlike, victory laps, walk, want, wife, within, working








February 8, 2014
Q: Where do you want your work to go in the future?

Barbara’s studio
A: Recently I answered a question about why I create, but now that I think about it, the same answer applies to what I want to do as an artist in the future:
~ to create bold and vibrant pastel paintings and photographs that have never existed before
~ to continue to push my primary medium – soft pastel on sandpaper – as far as I can and to use it in more innovative ways
~ to create opportunities for artistic dialogue with people who understand and value the work to which I am devoting my life
The last has always been the toughest. I sometimes think of myself as Sisyphus because expanding the audience for my art is an ongoing uphill battle. Many artist friends tell me they feel the same way about building their audience. It’s one of the most difficult tasks that we have to do as artists. I heard Annie Leibovitz interviewed on the radio once and remember her saying that after 40 years as a photographer, everything just gets richer. Notice that she didn’t say it gets any easier; she said, “it just gets richer.” I have been a painter for nearly 30 years and a photographer for 11. I agree completely. All artists have to go wherever our work goes. Creating art and watching the process evolve is an endlessly fascinating intellectual journey. I wouldn’t want to be spending my time on earth doing anything else!
Comments are welcome!
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February 5, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 77

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.
Current possibilities far exceed any single artist’s capacity to engage them. Indeed, every known way of making art ever undertaken in all of history is included in today’s inventory of creative options. Thus, choices must be made. This has had a profound effect upon the quantity and diversity of skills needed to become an artist today. In addition to such conventional forms of artistic talent as visual acuity, manual dexterity, sensitivity, intelligence, ingenuity, and perseverance, contemporary artists must also be able to make judicious choices from a limitless inventory of alternatives. A decisive aspect of the creative act involves choosing a place amid possibilities that are as bountiful as they are eclectic and chaotic. Even this process entail choices. In staking the territory they wish to occupy, artists may be gluttons or ascetics, connoisseurs or commoners. Relationships between artists and their career choices may be lifelong and monogamous, or sequentially monogamous, polygamous, or promiscuous. But artists’ options even exceed selecting precedents. Free access to the past is amplified by freedom to augment the catalogue of creative options by contributing something new.
In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art by Linda Weintraub
Comments are welcome!
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