Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 2

Remembering Bryan, today and every day!

Bryan C. Jack, Jan. 3, 1953 – Sept. 11, 2001

Comments are welcome!

Q: How do you decide when a pastel painting is finished?

Signing “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”

A:  During the several months that I work on a pastel painting, I search for the best, most eye-popping colors, as I build up and blend together as many as 25 to 30 layers of pigment.  I am able to complete some areas, like the background, fairly easily –  maybe with six or seven layers – but the more realistic parts take more applications because I am continually refining and adding details.  Details always take time to perfect. 

No matter how many pastel layers I apply, however, I never use fixatives.  It is difficult to see this in reproductions of my work, but the finished surfaces achieve a texture akin to velvet.   My technique involves blending each layer with my fingers, pushing pastel deep into the tooth of the sandpaper.  The paper holds plenty of pigment and because the pastel doesn’t flake off, there is no need for fixatives.

I consider a given painting complete when it is as good as I can make it, when adding or subtracting anything would diminish what is there.  I know my abilities and I know what each individual stick of pastel can do.  I continually try to push myself and my materials to their limits.              

Comments are welcome.

Pearls from artists* # 668

Pastel paintings awaiting pickup by the shipper

Human consciousness moves, but it is not a leap; it is one inch. One inch is a small jump. But that jump is everything. You go way out and then you have to come back – to see if you can move that one inch.

Phillip Guston quoted in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice by Kate Kretz

Comments are welcome!

Q: Pastel dust can be toxic. Do you use air filters in your work space?

Barbara’s Studio

A:  No, but I wear a surgical mask when I work, to prevent breathing pastel dust.  Also, I use a barrier cream, called Artgard, to prevent pigment being absorbed into my skin through cuts.  I take care that my head is always higher than my hand as I work, so the dust is below my mouth and nose.  It’s difficult to tell from the photo but my easel is tilted forward, allowing pastel dust to fall onto the easel and floor. 

I am well aware of the toxicity of pastel, especially with colors that contain cadmium, and believe I take the proper precautions.  After forty years working with soft pastel, so far I’ve managed to stay healthy.

Comments are welcome.

Pearls from artists* # 667

“Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”, in progress

*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 the eternal origin of art – that a human being confronts a form that wants to be one a work of art through him. Not a figment of his soul, but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being […] and the work is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me. The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor describe: I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all the clarity of the experienced world.

Martin Buber quoted in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice by Kate Kretz

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

Dropping off “Showman” at Underground, Merrifield, VA

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

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 666

With “Harbinger,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 35” x 28.5” 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.

Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done. Most of it is not fairy dust in the least.

But sometimes it is fairy dust. Sometimes when I’m in the midst of writing, I feel like I am suddenly walking on one of those moving sidewalks that you find in a big airport terminal; I still have a long slog to my gate. And my luggage is still heavy, but I can feel myself being gently propelled by some exterior force. Something is carrying me along – something powerful and generous – and that something is decidedly not me.

You may know this feeling. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve made something wonderful, or done something wonderful, and when you look back at it later, all you can say is: “I don’t even know where that came from.”

Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress!

A: I recently started a new small “Bolivianos” pastel painting.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 665

“Broken,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″ image, 50″ x 70″ 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.

We are wordlessly persuaded and taught outright to hide so much of what we have unearthed in our lives. But artists throughout the centuries have described the power of using anguish as a catalyst to fuel their creativity. In Greek epic poetry, ‘Kleos’ refers to immortal renown. Unlike present-day fame, this term referred exclusively to heroes who had surmounted a great obstacle or persevered through tremendous difficulties. There is a certain authority that comes from those who have endured hardship. They have earned the depth of their work.

Darkness contains a great deal of energy. We can use it for destruction or creativity. Only those who tolerate it are able to illuminate the shadowy corners, revealing the nefariousness that hopes to stay hidden. We cannot change our past, or any hell that we have been through. But art provides the means to exorcise the pain that has taken up residence in our body and fashion it into a form outside ourselves, in an infinitely affirmative gesture. The darkness we have passed through was not endured in vain if we mold it into a vision that lights the way out… for us, and for all the other souls who undoubtedly need it.

Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice

Comments are welcome!

Q: Why do you have so many pastels?

Barbara’s Studio

A: Our eyes can see infinitely more colors than the relative few that are made into pastels. When I layer pigments onto the sandpaper substrate, I mix new colors directly on the paper. The short answer is, I need lots of pastels so that I can make new colors.

I have been working exclusively with soft pastel for 40 years. Whenever I feel myself getting into a rut in how I select and use my colors, I look around for new materials to try.   Fortunately, new brands of soft pastels are continually coming onto the market. There are pastels that are handmade by artists – I love discovering these – and new colors manufactured by well-known pastel companies.  Some sticks of soft pastel are oily, some are buttery, some more powdery, some crumble easily, some are more durable.  Each one feels distinct in my hand.

Furthermore, they each have unique mixing properties.  It’s an under-appreciated science that I stumbled upon (or maybe I invented it, I’m not sure since I cannot know how other pastel painters work). In this respect soft pastel is very different from other paint media. Oil painters, for example, need only a few tubes of paint to make any color in the world. I don’t go in much for studying color theory as a formal discipline. If you want to really understand and learn how to use color, try soft pastel and spend 10,000+ hours (the amount of time Malcolm Gladwell says, in his book, “Outliers,” that it takes to master a skill) figuring it all out for yourself!

Comments are welcome.