Barbara Rachko Art

Original Soft Pastel on Sandpaper

Price and size includes frames (maple wood with white mats). Artwork 20" x 26" Her pastel-on-sandpaper series, "Domestic Threats" and "Black Paintings", both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly charged narratives.[9][10] Rachko also has created a series of photographs entitled "Gods and Monsters".[11] In these chromogenic prints, she is "painting with a camera," creating variations that free the camera from being a mechanical recording device of what lies before it. She prints all of these images by hand. The earlier "Domestic Threats" pastel-on-sandpaper paintings used her West Village apartment or her 1932 Sears house in Virginia as a backdrop. The "Black Paintings" series grew directly from "Domestic Threats". In the "Black Paintings," the figures (actors) take center stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. have been eliminated and replaced by intense dark black pastel. Each painting takes months to complete as she slowly builds up as many as 30 layers of soft pastel. Her long-standing fascination with traditional masks progressed in the spring of 2017 when she visited the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia where one exhibition included more than fifty festival masks. The resulting series is entitled “Bolivianos”.[12] She has also written an e-book, From Pilot to Painter[13] and writes a regular blog, Barbara Rachko...

Works Her pastel-on-sandpaper series, "Domestic Threats" and "Black Paintings", both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly charged narratives.[9][10] Rachko also has created a series of photographs entitled "Gods and Monsters".[11] In these chromogenic prints, she is "painting with a camera," creating variations that free the camera from being a mechanical recording device of what lies before it. She prints all of these images by hand. The earlier "Domestic Threats" pastel-on-sandpaper paintings used her West Village apartment or her 1932 Sears house in Virginia as a backdrop. The "Black Paintings" series grew directly from "Domestic Threats". In the "Black Paintings," the figures (actors) take center stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. have been eliminated and replaced by intense dark black pastel. Each painting takes months to complete as she slowly builds up as many as 30 layers of soft pastel. Her long-standing fascination with traditional masks progressed in the spring of 2017 when she visited the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia where one exhibition included more than fifty festival masks. The resulting series is entitled “Bolivianos”.[12] She has also written an e-book, From Pilot to Painter[13] and writes a regular blog, Barbara Rachko...

Price and size includes frames (maple wood with white mats). Artwork 58" x 38" Her pastel-on-sandpaper series, "Domestic Threats" and "Black Paintings", both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly charged narratives.[9][10] Rachko also has created a series of photographs entitled "Gods and Monsters".[11] In these chromogenic prints, she is "painting with a camera," creating variations that free the camera from being a mechanical recording device of what lies before it. She prints all of these images by hand. The earlier "Domestic Threats" pastel-on-sandpaper paintings used her West Village apartment or her 1932 Sears house in Virginia as a backdrop. The "Black Paintings" series grew directly from "Domestic Threats". In the "Black Paintings," the figures (actors) take center stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. have been eliminated and replaced by intense dark black pastel. Each painting takes months to complete as she slowly builds up as many as 30 layers of soft pastel. Her long-standing fascination with traditional masks progressed in the spring of 2017 when she visited the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia where one exhibition included more than fifty festival masks. The resulting series is entitled “Bolivianos”.[12] She has also written an e-book, From Pilot to Painter[13] and writes a regular blog, Barbara Rachko...

Price and size includes frames (maple wood with white mats). Artwork 58" x 38" Her pastel-on-sandpaper series, "Domestic Threats" and "Black Paintings", both use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly charged narratives.[9][10] Rachko also has created a series of photographs entitled "Gods and Monsters".[11] In these chromogenic prints, she is "painting with a camera," creating variations that free the camera from being a mechanical recording device of what lies before it. She prints all of these images by hand. The earlier "Domestic Threats" pastel-on-sandpaper paintings used her West Village apartment or her 1932 Sears house in Virginia as a backdrop. The "Black Paintings" series grew directly from "Domestic Threats". In the "Black Paintings," the figures (actors) take center stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. have been eliminated and replaced by intense dark black pastel. Each painting takes months to complete as she slowly builds up as many as 30 layers of soft pastel. Her long-standing fascination with traditional masks progressed in the spring of 2017 when she visited the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia where one exhibition included more than fifty festival masks. The resulting series is entitled “Bolivianos”.[12] She has also written an e-book, From Pilot to Painter[13] and writes a regular blog, Barbara Rachko...

The Black Paintings is a series of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings that use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly-charged narratives. In the Black Paintings the figures (actors) take central stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. are eliminated and replaced by intense dark black pastel. Each painting takes months to complete as Barbara slowly layers and blends up to 30 layers of soft pastel. The idea for the Black Paintings began when I attended a jazz history course and learned how Miles Davis developed cool jazz from bebop. In bebop the notes were played hard and fast as musicians showcased their technical virtuosity. Cool jazz was a much more relaxed style with fewer notes, i.e., the music was pared down to its essentials. Similarly this series evolved from dense, complex visual compositions into paintings that depict only the essential elements—the actors. As the series evolves what is left out becomes increasingly more important, resulting in more demands being placed on the viewer. – Barbara Rachko

Soft pastel on sandpaper. From Rachko’s newest series, Bolivianos. Upon a visit to the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Rachko noticed an exhibit of historical...