Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 22

Pearls from artists* # 581

With recent “Bolivianos”

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

The essence of style is this: We have something in us, about us; it can be called many things, but for now let’s call it our original nature. We are born with our original nature, but on top of that, as we grow up, we accommodate to the patterns and habits of our culture, family, physical environment, and the daily business of the life we have taken on. What we are taught solidifies as “reality.” Our persona, the mask we show the world, develops out of our experience and training, step by step from infancy to adulthood. We construct our world through the actions of perception, learning, and expectation. We construct our “self” through the same actions of perception, learning, and expectation. World and self interlock and match each other, step by step and shape by shape. If the two constructions, self and world, mesh, we grow from child to adult becoming “normally adjusted individuals.” If they do not mesh so well, we may experience feelings of inner division, loneliness, or alienation.

If we should happen to become artists, our work takes on, to a certain extent, the style of the time: the clothing in which we are dressed by our generation, our country and language, our surroundings, the people who have influenced us.

But somehow, even when we are grown up and “adjusted,” everything we do and are – our handwriting, the vibrato of our voice, the way we handle the bow or breathe into the instrument, our way of using language, the look in our eyes, the pattern of whirling fingerprints on our hand – all these things are symptomatic of our original nature. They all show the imprint of our own deeper style or character.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

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

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 580

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.

Love is the spirit that motivates the artist’s journey. The love may be sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful, or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it’s a powerful motive in the artist’s life. The actor Derek Jacobi distinguished this special deeply rooted drive from mere desire in the following way:

You have to have an absolute obsession and compulsion to act, not just desire; it’s just not enough to have talent and want to express it, it’s not enough. It’s got to be more deeply rooted, more abrasive. The fire in the belly has got to be there. If there’s no fire, you can’t do it.

What is it that the artist loves? It is first and foremost the sheer power of whatever medium has attracted him. This is why he’s an artist and not a botanist or an archeologist: an art form has gotten under his skin. It may be the power of the book that gripped him, the power of dance, the power of music, the power of the image, or the power of the play.

Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

Comments are welcome!

Q: What do you like most about being an artist?

Entrance to Barbara’s studio

A: I love walking into my studio in the morning, knowing that I will spend the day doing what I love, using all my talents, skills, and experience to solve whatever problems lie ahead in the work. As artists we create our own tasks and then go about solving them. Yes, the day to day challenges are significant, but having the freedom to do meaningful work that we love is priceless.

When I was a Lieutenant in the Navy working at the Pentagon, I was very unhappy (and one doesn’t just give two weeks notice and leave the Navy behind)! I still remember what it was like having a soul-crushing job. I am grateful for this turn in my life journey.  How much better life is as a professional artist!

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 579

New York, NY

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

An empirical fact about our lives is that we do not and cannot know what will happen a day or a moment in advance. The unexpected awaits us at every turn and every breath. The future is a vast perpetually regenerated mystery and the more we live and know, the greater the mystery. When we drop the blinders of our preconceptions, we are virtually propelled by every circumstance into the present time and the present mind: the moment, the whole moment, and nothing but the moment. This is a state of mind taught and strengthened by improvisation, a state of mind in which the here and now is not some trendy idea but a matter of life and death, upon which we can learn to reliably depend. We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in general motion and a perpetual invitation to create.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Comments are welcome!

Q: This portrait has an interesting story. Can you explain? (Question from Anna Rybat via Facebook)

“John,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 22” x 26” (image), 1989.

A: “John” was one of several portraits I made of friends in 1988-90 to build up my portfolio for the portrait company I worked for when I left the active duty Navy. I had gifted it to John Breeskin, the psychologist/friend pictured.

When he died, someone sent it back to me. (I hadn’t known he died). I must have not been working that day so for some reason, it was delivered to a print studio on another floor in my building. When the printer moved out, he found it and got in touch with me. By that time he had had “John” for more than a year and never bothered to tell me! The packaging had been removed so I have no idea who sent it or where exactly it came from.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 578

Hudson Yards, New York City

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

He [His Holiness Ngawang Tenzing Zangbo, the Sherpas’ Tengboche abbot and overseer of all Buddhist gompas in Nepal] said that he is not surprised to see Westerners flocking to Tibetan monasteries in Nepal. “In the West, there are too many distractions,” he said. “People long to come to these mountains. Here you can learn things through your heart.” He noted that Kathmandu also drew many Himalayan people because of its proximity to sacred places, but was confident that many lamas among them would return to remote areas and practice a wholesome religion free of urban temptations. He hopes that the spiritual boom will result in higher levels of religious life all around the region and not the further degradation of monastic life through materialism. He sounded as if it might be touch-and-go in some places.

Barbara Crossette in So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

Alexandria, VA

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

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 577

In the 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.

What is the popular conception of the artist? Gather a thousand descriptions and the resulting composite is the portrait of a moron: he is held to be childish, irresponsible, and ignorant or stupid in everyday affairs.

The picture does not necessarily involve censure or unkindness. These definitions are attributed to the artist’s preoccupation with his particular kind of fantasy and to the unworldly nature of the fantastic itself. The bantering tolerance granted to the absentminded professor is extended to the artist. Biographers contrast the artless news of his judgments with the high attainment of his art, and while his naïveté or rascality are gossiped about, they are viewed as signs of Simplicity and Inspiration, which are the Handmaidens of Art. And if the artist is inarticulate and lacking in the usual repositories of fact and information, how fortunate, it is said, that nature has contrived to divert him from all worldly distractions so he may be single-minded in regards to his special office.

Mark Rothko in The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, edited and with an introduction by Christopher Rothko

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I continue working on “Apparition,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” (left) and “Narcissist,” 20” x 26,” soft pastel on sandpaper (right).

Comments are welcome!