Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 9

Pearls from artists* # 635

Bourges, 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.

When we focus on the future, we do one of three things. We fantasize, which involves big dreams that are mostly for fun and entertainment; we dwell, which involves focusing on all the bad stuff that might happen – this was the official pastime of my hometown – or we hope, which involves envisioning the future while recognizing the inevitability of challenges. Interestingly, more hopeful people anticipate setbacks along the way and work to remove them. And yet I always imagined that hopeful and optimistic people are just born that way…

The Book of Hope: A survival Guide for Trying Times, Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I continue working on “Oblate,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”. I often say that titles can come from anywhere and here is a great example. “Oblate” came to me thanks to a sign on Route 95 in Maryland. It says, “Oblates of Our Lady of the Highways.” An oblate is a person who devotes themselves to a religious order. I like the word and thought it a fitting title for this painting.

I have been driving that stretch of Route 95 for more than twenty years. Only now, as I wrote this blog post, did I uncover a fascinating story about “Our Lady of the Highways.” https://www.ncregister.com/news/our-lady-of-the-highways

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 634

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.

Sometimes I think, “Well, why on Earth do I feel hopeful? Because the problems facing the planet are huge and if I analyze them carefully, they do sometimes seem impossible to solve. So why do I feel hopeful? Partly, because I’m obstinate. I just won’t give in. But it’s partly also because we cannot accurately predict what the future might bring. We simply can’t. No one can know how it will all turn out.

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson

Comments are welcome!

Q: Are there any artists you admire? (Question from “Cultured Focus” Magazine)

“Henri Matisse: Forms in Freedom,” The National Arts Center, Tokyo, Japan

A: Among historical painters, I adore Henri Matisse and André Derain, for their striking compositions and bold use of colors.  Among living photographers, I am most fascinated by the Pictures Generation, namely, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Sandy Skoglund, and Gregory Crewdson.  I am drawn to these photographers, I think, because my earliest pastel painting series involved staged photography. 

Comments are welcome!

Merry Christmas from New York City!

Rockefeller Center, 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.

Comments are welcome!

Q: Did you formally study art? (Question from “Cultured Focus Magazine”)

International Center of Photography website

A: My bachelor’s degree in Psychology is from the University of Vermont.  I did not formally study art, unless you want to count the several years-worth of drawing and painting classes I took at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA. I never went to art school so do not have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in art.  

Much later, in the early 2000s, I was compelled to study photography at the International Center of Photography in New York.  This is a rather long story.

On September 11, 2001, my husband Bryan Jack, a high-ranking federal government employee, a brilliant economist and a budget analyst at the Pentagon, was on his way to present his monthly guest lecture in economics at the Naval Postgraduate College in Monterey, CA. He was a passenger on the plane that departed from Dulles Airport and was high-jacked and crashed into the Pentagon.  

Losing Bryan on 9/11 was the biggest shock of my life, devastating in every way imaginable. We were soulmates and newly married. I have lived with his loss every single day for more than twenty years now.  Life has never been the same.

In the summer of 2002 I was beginning to feel ready to get back to work. Learning about photography and cameras became essential avenues to my well-being.  

My first challenge was learning how to use Bryan’s 4 x 5 view camera. Bryan had always taken the 4 x 5 negatives from which I derived the reference photos that were essential tools for making pastel paintings.  I enrolled in a one-week view camera workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York.  Surprisingly, it was very easy. I had derived substantial technical knowledge just from watching Bryan for many years.

After the view camera workshop, I decided to throw myself into learning this new medium, beginning with Photography I. I spent the next few years taking many classes at ICP and learning as much as I could. Eventually, I learned how to use Bryan’s extensive collection of film cameras, to properly light the setups that served as subject material for my “Domestic Threats” pastel paintings, and to make my own large chromogenic prints in a darkroom. 

Then in October 2009 I was invited to present a solo photography exhibition at a gallery in New York. Continuing to make art after Bryan’s death had seemed like such an impossibility. I remember thinking how proud he would have been to know I became a good photographer.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 633

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.

… as he makes clear repeatedly throughout the text, there can be no such thing as a revolution in art. The “plastic process” as he [Mark Rothko] labels, it – the development of art – is inherently evolutionary. An artist can react against it, but there is no way to be outside it; it is the fabric with which he or she weaves. Technique, ways of seeing, representing, and balancing, are all in a common pool from which the artist draws.

Christopher Rothko in The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko

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!

Pearls from artists* # 632

Basquiat X Warhol at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Photo: Christine Marchal

*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 mind once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson ((1803 – 1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson was more prescient than he can ever have realized. It was not until the 1960s that neuroscientist Marian Diamond discovered that exposure to enriched environments increased brain matter, specifically in the brain’s outer cortex. Prior to her landmark research, scientists believed that the brain remained static until it started to decline in older age. Diamond was the first to observe the brain’s neuroplasticity, yet her findings were disputed and rejected for many years. Today she is considered one of the founders of modern neuroscience.

Museums are the ultimate enriched environments, or super-enriched spaces, that are good for body, mind, and soul. Museums are dedicated to arousing our curiosity; engaging us in discovery and learning; and evoking our reflection, wonder, and awe. Artists (and Emerson) have known intuitively what scientists are now proving with rigorous research: aesthetic experiences affect us in extraordinary ways. In short, our brains are wired for art.

The Museum and the Mind by Susan Magsamen in Museum, May/June 2024

Comments are welcome!

Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A: I started a new small pastel painting!

Comments are welcome!