Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 18

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Nearly finished!

A: I’m finishing up “Maestro,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 600

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 am always between two currents of thought: first the material difficulties, turning round and round and round to make a living; and second, the study of color. I am always hoping to make a discovery here, to express the feelings of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones. To express the thought behind a brow by radiance of a bright tone against a somber background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset glow.

Vincent van Gogh quoted by Stephen Nachmanovitch in “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

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Q: What do your collectors have in common?

Screenshot from “Barbara Rachko: True Grit,” Photo: Jennifer Cox

A: Generally speaking, the people who collect my work typically range in age from about 40 to the late 70s, they are college graduates with advanced degrees, and they often don’t have kids, which is why they have disposable income and time to pursue their interests in art and culture. When I meet them (presuming my work was sold through a gallery or other third party), we usually have much to talk about – art, art history, photography, cinema, film history, dance, drama, music, travel, archaeology, Mexico, Central and South America, Bali, India – the list goes on and on.

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Pearls from artists* # 599

“Epiphany,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″

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

Leonora [Carrington] certainly became knowledgeable about Mexican muralism and in the early 1960s she would paint her own mural, el mundo mágico de Los mayas, but she was clear that this didn’t involve associating herself with the Mexican school [of muralists]. ‘I was not interested in a social message in painting and my mural was totally foreign to that discourse,’ she explained. Explanations were not something she gave often; she was always very clear that for her, elucidation was neither necessary nor possible, because she believed that art spoke to people in the deepest part of their psyche. She warned me not to try to rationalize or intellectualize it. The way to understand paintings, she said, was to tune in to one’s own feelings about a work: ‘You’re trying to intellectualize something desperately, and you’re wasting your time. That’s not a way of understanding, to make into a kind of mini-logic – you’ll never understand by that road.’

Joanna Moorhead in Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington

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Q: What do collectors say about your work?

“False Friends,” one of Cheryll and John’s pastel paintings

A: Here’s a quote from Cheryll Chew and John Frye, who own four of my pastel paintings.

We walked into her studio in 1994 and saw “In Reality the Frogs Were Men.” That instant on that day, my consuming passion with Barbara Rachko’s work began. We had absolutely no resources to buy “In Reality . . .” I did, however, know without a doubt that one day we would have her work, no matter what it took to get it.
We, years later, have “Scene Eleven: Bedroom,” “Scene Nine: Living Room,” “Scene Five: Kitchen,” and “False Friends.”
We have unorthodox appreciations and every single day, those pieces of art quicken the pulse and bring us pure pleasure.
Her pieces make us want to dance wildly around the room and wave our arms in the air. We are deeply grateful that her work is in our home. Her art balances the everyday domestic with the unthinkably rare, lovely, and maniacal. That is an edgy state of being that we thrive in.

Not long ago, we read an article about Nan Goldin. In the article was a phrase that says precisely what Barbara Rachko’s work does for us . . .

all of the pleasure circuits are deeply fulfilled by looking. . .

Nan Goldin The Look of Love: Matchmaking at the Louvre
NY Times,10.27.2011

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Pearls from artists* # 598

“The Enigma,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”

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

For art to appear, we have to disappear. This may sound strange, but in fact it is a common appearance. The elementary case, for most people, is when our eye or ear is “caught” by something: a tree, a rock, a cloud, a beautiful person, a baby’s gurgling, spatters of sunlight reflected off some wet mud in the forest, the sound of a guitar wafting unexpectedly out of a window. Mind and sense are arrested for a moment, fully in the experience. Nothing else exists. When we “disappear” in this way, everything around us becomes a surprise, new and fresh. Self and environment unite. Attention and intention fuse. We see things just as we and they are, yet we are able to guide and direct them to be one just the way we want them. This lively and vigorous state of mind is the most favorable to the germination of original work of any kind. It has its roots in child’s play, and its ultimate flowering in full-blown artistic creativity.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

Valle De La Luna, Atacama Desert, Chile

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

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 597

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.

From earliest childhood, the boys had been treated differently from their sister. They were allowed more freedom, encouraged to play outdoors and to engage in rough and tumble, and their lives were expanded early on when, at the age of seven, each was sent to St. Mary’s, the prep school of Stonyhurst College. It seemed as if the boys were being readied for adventure and excitement, but while their horizons were opening up, Leonora [Carrington] felt hers were being closed down – or more specifically, never explored. Her role, which was clear even when she was in the nursery, was to keep safe: not to rock any boats, not to take any chances. What they sought to teach her was that she should sit a certain way and behave a certain way: she should be supportive, helpful, polite. She should listen, especially to men, she should have traditional skills, such as playing music and speaking French. Drawing and painting, for which she showed altitude from an early age, were fine within reason. What harm could there be in Prim [Lenora] creating pictures? Especially if those pictures were of flowers and trees, family members and characters from fairy stories.

But art was Leonora’s secret weapon – and she hid it in plain sight, because her parents did not have the faintest idea where her talents might lead. Art, for them, was unthreatening and pretty. They had no idea that this skill their daughter was developing would be one the key to another life entirely; still less that art could never be a validation of the status quo, but meant a radical reappraisal of everything in the artists sight.

So what Leonora practiced in the nursery at Crookhey was the subversive silence of smoldering rebellion. Spared by the inherent unfairness that gave Pat, Gerard, and Arthur so much freedom; stoked by the growing realization that she had a talent that would lead, eventually, to Liberty. “I always painted, and I always knew it was what I would do,” she said many years later. As the Jesuits who educated her brothers at Stonyhurst might have said (but didn’t): show me a girl aged seven, and I will show you the woman.

Joanna Moorhead in Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I continue working on “Maestro,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.”

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 596

Film still from “Barbara Rachko: True Grit,” Directed by Jennifer Cox, Moto Films LLC

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

Being an artist is very hard work. Not only do you have to constantly develop your discipline, but if you have a desire to make a living, you have to be a good businessperson.

Agents, business managers, etc., etc., are not the authors of your career. They make suggestions. They are a part of your research team. You are the author. You are the center of your career. You have to run the show. I hope your show is about more than gold digging. I hope your show is about becoming the most engaging, enchanting, magical person that you can be – through your art. Art is ultimately transcendent. That’s a fact.

Anna Deavere Smith in Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts – For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind

Comments are welcome!