Barbara Rachko

When you see a Rachko painting, the unique approach instantly identifies and sets apart this extraordinary work of an artist who divides her time between her Virginia home and her Greenwich Village, New York studio apartment.

"I love to draw, and I like having my hands in the medium," she writes. "There's nothing between me and the painting when I use pastels. I set up objects and then basically live with the setup. If I'm reading a magazine or a book, I'll throw it into the painting I happen to be working on."

Ms. Rachko maintains that "the wonderful thing about art is that you can make paintings of whatever you're interested in. Art is not separate from life but is a part of life. Whatever your passions are, you can paint them."

Barbara Rachko is intensely passionate about her seventy-year-old Sears home. With that passion uppermost in her mind, she selects a location in her home and for it she assembles furniture, rugs, dolls, masks and statuettes she has gathered over the years. She then adjusts the tableaux as she lives with it. When the grouping has gelled into its final configuration, she photographs it. Working from photograph, she then applies 20 to 30 coats of pastels on sandpaper, the resulting colors so saturated they glow.

The punctilious prettiness of a Rachko domestic scene contrasts starkly with their dysfunctional dynamics. Her arresting paintings seem to hint at some evil lurking in the hearts of American homes and the startling juxtaposing of objects demands instant attention.