Q: What would you say collectors of your work have in common?

Marzo 16, 2024

Barbara’s Studio


A: That’s a great question! I’d say that collectors of my work typically range in age from about 40 to their late 70s, they are college graduates with advanced degrees, 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, India, Asia – the list goes on and on.

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Pearls from artists* # 602

Marzo 13, 2024

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.

Anyone who studies an instrument, sport, or other art form must deal with practice, experiment, and training. We learn only by doing. There is a gigantic difference between the projects we imagine doing or plan to do and the ones we actually do. It is like the difference between a fantasied romance and one in which we really encounter another human being with all his or her complexities. Everyone knows this, yet we are inevitably taken aback by the effort and patience needed in the realization. A person may have great creative proclivities, glorious inspirations, and exalted feelings, but there is no creativity unless creations actually come into existence.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Art and Life

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Travel photo of the month*

Marzo 9, 2024

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

Managua, Nicaragua, 1957; Elliott Erwitt Retrospective, le Musée Maillol, June 2023, Paris, France

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Pearls from artists* 601

Marzo 6, 2024

Along the Seine, Paris

*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 central construct of café life in Paris introduced [Jack] Youngerman to contemporary political and cultural debates. He would take with him to New York this particular way of being alone but with people. It would infuse Coenties Slip with its unique template of influence by osmosis; the collective solitude model unique to the geographic makeup of that corner of New York. In Paris, “at any time, you can go out and be part of the city, you can see passersby, you can get out of your personal loneliness, without having to make conversation with another person. That’s something I want to do almost every day.” For Youngerman , it felt vital for art making.

Prudence Peiffer in The Slip: The New York Street that Changed American Art Forever

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Q: What’s on the easel today?

Marzo 2, 2024

Nearly finished!


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

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Pearls from artists* # 600

Febrero 28, 2024
Barbara’s Studio
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?

Febrero 24, 2024

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.

Comments are welcome!

Pearls from artists* # 599

Febrero 21, 2024
"Epiphany," soft pastel on sandpaper, 38" x 58"
“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?

Febrero 17, 2024
"False Friends," one of Cheryll and John's pastel paintings
“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

Febrero 14, 2024
“The Enigma,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”
“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

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Travel photo of the month*

Febrero 10, 2024

Valle De La Luna, Atacama Desert, Chile


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

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