A: When people ask if I have a favorite pastel among the thousands in my studio, I am quick to answer, “Rembrandt black pastel!” This is the single color that I use the most. I buy them by the dozens because it takes many layers of pigment – applied and hand-blended together, one on top of the other, on sandpaper – to achieve the intense black backgrounds that distinguish my “Bolivianos” series of pastel paintings. Typically, I use up a minimum of two or three Rembrandt pastels to create these backgrounds. A few years ago one New York art critic cleverly dubbed them, “Barbara’s black-grounds.” How cool is that!
