Barbara Rachko is the Traditional Artist Spotlight winning artist for the month of October 2018. She is an American contemporary artist and author based in both New York City and Alexandria, VA. She uses her large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art to create one-of-a-kind pastel-on-sandpaper paintings that combine reality and fantasy and depict personal narratives. Her paintings are bold, vibrant, and extremely unusual.

Barbara's Solo Art Exhibition will be featured on the website for the month of October 2018. The gallery will promote Barbara and her work on the Fusion Art website, in Fusion Art's Artsy.net Gallery, individual online press releases to hundreds of outlets, email blasts to over 2000 buyers, collectors, galleries and art professionals, in online event calendars, art news websites and through the gallery’s extensive social media outlets.  Fusion Art's objective is to promote the Artist Spotlight winning artists, worldwide, to art professionals, gallerists, collectors and buyers.

Please read Barbara's Biography below as she describes her history and inspiration in her own words. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see her exhibition.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these award-winning pieces, or to see more of Barbara's work, please visit her website.

Also, please visit Fusion Art’s YouTube Channel to see Barbara’s Solo Art Exhibition Video.

Thank you to all the artists who participated in the Artist Spotlight competition and congratulations to Barbara and the other Artist Spotlight winning artists.

Barbara Rachko's Biography

Barbara Rachko is an American contemporary artist and author who divides her time between residences in New York City and Alexandria, VA. She is best known for her pastel-on-sandpaper paintings, her eBook, “From Pilot to Painter,” and her blog, “Barbara Rachko’s Colored Dust.”

Barbara has led an extraordinary, inspiring life. She learned to fly at the age of 25 and became a commercial pilot and Boeing-727 flight engineer before joining the Navy. As a Naval officer she spent many years working at the Pentagon and retired as a Commander. On 9/11 her husband, Dr. Bryan C. Jack, was tragically killed on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Barbara uses her large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art – masks, carved wooden animals, papier mâché figures, and toys – to create one-of-a-kind pastel-on-sandpaper paintings that combine reality and fantasy and depict personal narratives. Her paintings are bold, vibrant, and extremely unusual.

New York critic Peter Dellolio remarks, “It is undeniable that, like de Chirico, Barbara Rachko has created a unique, original, and very private landscape.” Arts writer Ann Landi writes, “Barbara Rachko’s antecedents are not in the folk art traditions of the cultures she studies and embraces, but rather in the sophisticated strategies of Henry Matisse (who was a master at mixing patterns) and Edgar Degas (who exploited the power of oblique angles and cropped figures).”

Barbara exhibits nationally and internationally and has won many awards during her 30+ years as a professional artist.

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