Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 8

Pearls from artists* # 639

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.

… my deep and lifelong conviction [is] that the results of my work don’t have much to do with me. I can only be in charge of producing the work itself. That’s a hard enough job. I refuse to take on additional jobs, such as trying to police what anybody thinks about my work once it leaves my desk.

Also, I realized it would be unreasonable and immature of me to expect that I should be allowed to have a voice of expression, but other people should not. If I am allowed to speak my inner truth, then my critics are allowed to speak their inner truths, as well. Fair’s fair. If you dare to create something and put it out there, after all, then it may accidentally stir up a response. That’s the natural order of life: the eternal inhale and exhale of action and reaction. But you are definitely not in charge of the reaction – even when the reaction is bizarre.

Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

New York, NY

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

I wasn’t actually traveling when I took this photo, but I am posting it anyway because I just love it. River ice is my favorite thing about winter in New York. And it has been years since I have seen ice on the Hudson River!

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 638

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 was in the presence of a woman [Grace Hartigan] who had sacrificed everything, including her only child, to be what she was: an artist. The rewards had been few, beyond a life well-lived (not materially, but spiritually) and the recognition in her waning years that she had been honest about who she was and what she needed. A rare accomplishment for a woman of any generation, it was particularly so of hers, when servitude to family was the only goal toward which a “healthy” woman was to aspire. Grace was living proof that, on the contrary, a life dreamed could be a life lived. All it took was courage, commitment, and humor. I remember both of us laughing a lot that afternoon. Though the subject was serious, the stories Grace told were fantastic and the woman who recounted them was as wild as the twenty-six-year-old who had abandoned everything in 1948 to paint, though she wasn’t even sure how.

Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women

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Q: What’s on the easel today?

A: I continue making slow progress on “Oblate,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20.”

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Pearls from artists* # 637

St. Malo, Brittany, France

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

After periods during which one has actively tried to solve a problem, but has not succeeded, the sudden right orientation of the situation, and with it the solution, tend to occur at moments of extreme mental passivity… A well-known physicist in Scotland once told me that this kind of thing is generally recognized by physicists in Britain. “We often talk about the Three B’s,” he said, “the Bus, the Bath, and the Bed. That’s where the great discoveries are made in our science.”

In my experience travel helps, too!

Wolfgang Koehler quoted in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Q: What lies in the future for you? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

Museum of Ethnography and Folklore, La Paz, Bolivia

A: I still have so much to say and share through my work! First, I want to continue creating and adding to the “Boliviano” series of pastel paintings that I began in 2017.

Second, Jennifer Cox, my director, and I are considering making part II of our film, “Barbara Rachko: True Grit,” which will require a return trip to Bolivia – to the Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, where I first encountered the masks that are my current subject matter, and to Oruro to see similar masks in action during Carnival celebrations. This will be a complex undertaking and the issue of financing will first need to be resolved. Stay tuned!

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Pearls from artists* # 636

With “Wise One” (left) and “The Moralist”

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

Some artists will rework a piece for half a lifetime before they know it is finished. An improviser may have to practice for years before being able to play a totally spontaneous minute of music in which every detail is right for its own fleeting moment. The great scientists and scholars are not those who publish or perish at any cost, but rather those who are willing to wait until the pieces of the puzzle come together in nature’s own design. The fruits of improvising, composing, writing, inventing, and discovering may flower spontaneously, but they arise from soil that we have prepared, fertilized, and tended in the faith that they will ripen in nature’s own time.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Comments are welcome!

Q: What kind of reactions do you get from spectators at your exhibitions? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

“Worlds Unseen & Seen,” Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY

A: Reactions to my work run the gamut – from dopey comments like, “I’m scared!” to “How in the world is it possible to achieve such beauty and profundity using only soft pastel on a piece of sandpaper!” I’m sure most artists can say the same.  We can only hope that our work finds its way to an audience that has the eyes, heart, and mind to understand, to appreciate on a deep level the decades of devotion, sacrifice, and hard work that go into creating works of art.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 635

Dinard, Brittany, France

*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 body of writing takes a thousand different forms,

and there is no right way to measure.

Changing, changing at the flick of a hand, its various

forms are difficult to capture.

Words and phrases compete with one another, but the

mind is still master.

Caught between the unborn and the living, the writer

struggles to maintain both depth and surface.

He may depart from the square, he may overstep the

circle, searching for the one true form of his reality.

He would fill the eyes of his readers with splendor, he

would sharpen the mind’s values.

The one whose language is muddled cannot do it;

only when mind is clear can language be noble.

Lu Chi quoted in Free Play: Improvisation in Art and Life by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Comments are welcome!

Travel photo of the month*

Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY

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

Comments are welcome!