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Today I’m excited to share the next adventure in my series for a wonderful life: #ENCHANTING DISCOVERIES…PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS! Get ready to enter the WHIMSICAL and super-sized imaginary world of the PLAYFULLY ELECTRIFYING ARTIST & SCRIBBLE EXPERT EXTRAORDINAIRE, BARBARA NEIBART. In addition to being one of the most intellectually creative AND rip-roaringly silly creative people in my life, Barb is also my childhood friend! I Love her work so much I asked her to immortalize my beloved French bulldog, Princess Lalo! Get ready to enter a special space where joy, creativity, giggles, greatness, and even playfully erotic dogs collide! You won’t want to miss this! And BTW, neither will your dog. You can commission spectacular pet portraits by Barbara for your four-legged Beasties, I mean Besties. Plus…Barb gives creativity workshops – writing and drawing – for individuals called Idea Vision Workshops. Learn from the best!
And so the interview of the inimitable artist and scribble expert extraordinaire Barbara Neibart begins!
PDvB: Let’s start with a little background about yourself.
BN: You mean like a resumé? I always wanted to be an artist. I attended UARTS (back when it was PCA) for 2 years, then transferred and got my BFA from Cornell. Awarded a summer (jr. year) fellowship to Yale at Norfolk, and a post-grad scholarship to the Brooklyn Museum. I got my MFA at Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
I show paintings and mixed media work in the US and Italy, and have been teaching art in college and privately since 1989. I also teach comics, cartoons and creativity workshops. When I’m not cursing, crying, and crumpling up drawings, I mean, creating art in my studio, I’m out walking my dog, Penny Lane, or playing tennis.
My illustration, video, and humor work clients include, among others, Nickelodeon, The Ford Foundation, the Wine Media Guild of NY, and Bust Magazine. I volunteered at the SF Zoo, the Cape May Avian Rehabilitation Center (the picture in my head is a disheveled seagull at a bar, with his beak in a shot glass), and did graphic production at ad agencies in San Francisco, Atlantic City, and Philadelphia.
PDvB: I have to interrupt right here because I want to start showing viewers your whimsical won-of-a-kind work! Starting, of course, with your drawing of my beloved Frenchie, Princess Lalo!
PDvB: Were you always interested in art?
BN: I always wanted to be an artist because my father was a humorous illustrator, and it seemed like he had so much fun – I wanted to be just like him. He was my idol.
PDvB: Tell us about your incredible DAILYSCRIBBLE SERIES. For instance, the inspiration behind it. How you get scribble ideas? Some fun you’ve had with it.
BN: My dad and I made scribble drawings when I was little. Then, a few years ago, I saw that cartoonist/MacArthur fellow Lynda Barry was giving a workshop at Omega in Rhinebeck NY, so I signed up, not knowing anything or anyone. Turned out to be an absolutely wonderful kick-in-the-pants-experience. One of the exercises is to make monsters out of others’ scribbles just like dad and I did. When I got home, I did 4 scribble-drawings every morning on yellow legal pads (2 minutes each), and after a couple of years, I added color. I began posting on Facebookwww.facebook.com/mydailyscribble, then a high school friend (Spritz!) asked if he could send me a few of his scribbles and Dailyscribble was born!
DvBF: Let me interject here. You mentioned that you LOVE IT when people send you their scribbles so you can work on them. You can email Barb at barbneibart@gmail.com.
BN: The fun is that I never know, sometimes until mid-drawing, what it’s going to be. The idea of flow, that opening up so sub/un-conscious connections and information can appear, is the goal.
PDvB: I know you’ve had some recognition for your work. Tell us about that.
BN: My fine art (Redshift)
and cartoon work (Dailyscribble, Wild Life, and ARF History) were included in a humor show at the Center for Contemporary Art in NJ. In 2020, my son, who works at Nickelodeon, showed Dailyscribble to his team and they loved it (which gives me such a kick!), and asked if I’d make a video of a drawing (in progress) in honor of their 5 millionth Instagram follower, using my scribble method. I had to change it up a bit, but that was really a blast to do.
PDvB: Could you give us a little info on where the ideas for your art come from? Maybe even specific to some of the artwork you’ve done.
BN: In Dailyscribble, other people’s scribbles are my inspiration. There’s a kind of energy to them that’s different from my own, that forces me to stretch, creatively.
Some of the scribbles look pretty obvious – faces, body parts (very often, genitalia…hmm… calling Dr. Freud…) etc., so when I see that, I consciously try to find something else, something unexpected, that may come from a deeper place. Most of the time, the answer comes pretty quickly; sometimes, I have to leave it and come back. In the beginning, I was going for the “perfect” answer, but then as time passed, I began to trust that the scribble itself would let me know what it wanted to be. I know it sounds dopey, but this way I’m open to more ideas, and more original imagery. I’ve done more than 500 dailyscribbles.
Dog Paintings. When I was visiting Venice, I noticed that because of the absence of cars, the dogs were super-chill. So, to the dismay of my traveling companions, I started following dogs and taking photographs. If the owner saw me, I’d ask permission, but otherwise, I was kind of a… puparozza. I started the Venetian dog series several years ago, but it’s still going! I also do pet portraits on commission.
ARF History is a book of irreverent cartoons about dogs inhabiting or interacting with the world’s greatest paintings. My dad and I used to laugh at people who walked through museums, whispering the names of artists with reverence – without really looking at the work. We went to a Picasso etching show, and saw parents scolding their children for laughing… “Shhh. It’s Picasso!” they admonished, without realizing that the kids were laughing at the extremely explicit erotic imagery. The parents weren’t even looking at the art; all they saw was the name. I learned irreverence at a young age…
ARF History shifts perspective a bit, and asks questions like, “what if Michelangelo thought up the idea for the Birth of Adam while giving his dog a tummy tickle?” What if Lichtenstein’s In the Car had an Afghan hound beside Brad instead of a woman? Did Van Gogh cut off his ear because he saw all the attention his injured puppy was getting? Once the ideas hit the paper, they kept coming, and ARF History was born. At the Meow-seum is next (in progress).
PDvB: Tell me about any interesting info or stories behind some of your paintings/scribbles.
BN: Hmmm. I was painting outside in a field once, and a cow walked into view, so I painted her in. As I was painting, she walked over, grabbed my beltloop in her mouth, and started walking away with me!
The inspiration behind my Redshift mixed media series: I watched Stephen Hawking’s Universe (rerun). Astrophysicists were mapping all of the galaxies in the universe, and they showed one of the maps. That night, I dreamed a painting/collage of a galaxy map, glued on top of my ripped, cancelled checks (the universal wonders versus the everyday worries). The next day, I emailed Dr. Sandra Faber, one of the scientists profiled on the show, and, to my surprise, she emailed back with access to the actual maps to print out. Turned into a 20+ series that’s still in my head. The upshot – I tell students all the time: it never hurts to ask!
PDvB: Can you riff a little about the whimsical/other nature of your art? Where does that come from? Is that something you are trying to get across as a world?
BN: I think I was born whimsical. My boyfriend says you’re only young once, but you can be immature forever, and that’s pretty much me.
I try to be very specific in my work (and I tell my students that, too). I do lots of research for every piece, both paintings and cartoons. We feel the specific in a more visceral and emotional way; we feel the generic much more superficially. Humor/whimsy comes from the subversion of expectations, and the juxtaposition of disparate images and ideas: a frog on a lily pad, painting her toenails, wearing a mask (decorated with printed flies, of course). There’s enough of the correct context and imagery (lily pad, pond, general frog anatomy, etc.) to make us believe the scenario, so we’re (hopefully) a little delighted when it becomes something else.
When I was a kid, my dad took me every Saturday, for years, to classes at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Itzhak Sankowsky was my teacher. He was a tiny, zillion year-old man with a Romanian accent, thick, messy white hair, and a huge white mustache. He drew out the whimsical in all of us; I’m not even sure how he did it. We each had an easel, canvas paper, and a muffin tin with tempera, or wax palettes with oil paints, and we’d just paint from imagination. When I didn’t know what to paint, I’d just make a scribble with my brush and paint whatever I saw in it. The one I remember most, and still have (somewhere) is a painted scribble turned into a purple seal, dreaming. Maybe that’s really where Dailyscribble started – way back when I was 10.
I am starting to think of Dailyscribble as its own world of zany inhabitants, but more important, I think it’s a way to help other people find their own inner creative being. Anyone can turn a scribble into a monster, and create a character that hadn’t existed before in the world, one that even has its own story. So, in that way, I’d like Dailyscribble to open up a universe of creativity for everyone.
PDvB: You seem to have an entrepreneurial spirit, can you tell us about that? Your biz journey? Any advice to others thinking about doing what you’re doing?
BN: I am a very reluctant marketer. I made WILD LIFE, an illustrated journal, my irreverent cartoon diary, because a cartoonist – a total stranger – told me I should make a book out of my drawings, and sell it at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival (MoCCafest) in New York. I had 6 weeks to learn Photoshop, InDesign, make the book, and get it printed. With some help from my son (who was in high school at the time), and a LOT of sweating and crying, I got it done!
I had a marketing mentor who taught me to make videos of work in progress, which ended up landing me the Nickelodeon job. My business journey is very up-and-down. I am a horrible salesperson. I tell all of my art students to take a business/marketing class.
PDvB: I love your use of brilliant bold color. Anything to talk about there?
BN: I let my intuition help with the color. I teach Color Theory (in colleges), and focus on the idea that color is relative: colors change depending on the colors surrounding them (ideas from the law of simultaneous contrast, and Albers’s Interaction of Color). Many of the colors I use appear more saturated than they actually are. The saturation level of my color really depends on the subject, and the mood I want to express.
PDvB: Is there some sort of theme that often connects or informs your work?
BN: I think that the underlying theme throughout all of my work-the painting and the drawing-is humor. Even in the “serious work”, there are undertones of irony or satire. I need to see the humor in everyday life; it keeps me going. It’s my cosmological constant.
Most of my humor is about relationships, or everyday life. My Wild Life books focus a little more on insects, just because they’re so cool looking and fun to draw and put clothes on – in the drawing, not in real life (I can’t sew, and definitely can’t sew that small).
I think that there is also a literary aspect to the work. I do lots of writing while I work. Metaphorical relationships and allusions (illusions!) are fun for me to play with, even if they are not obvious.
My non-humorous is, I think, emotionally based. I have to feel something for what I’m painting; if I don’t, I get bored.
PDvB: Are you ever short on inspiration? If so, what do you do to get back in the groove?
BN: I call it “ass in the chair” inspiration. First, I clean my studio work table, which is a like a paper storm most of the time. Then, I sit at the easel or table with a panel, sketchbook or someone’s scribble printed onto watercolor paper, and see what happens. If I sit there every day (usually in the morning, with or after coffee), something happens. I used to feel terrible if I didn’t get something done immediately, but I realized that ideas need time to percolate and to deepen. Now I am content (most of the time) to let the work progress in its own time.
Writing is an important part of my process. I have a daily routine I’ve picked up from different places. First, I write 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness, an exercise from The Artists’ Way by Julia Cameron. Then I do a timed Lynda Barry-inspired daily diary page, which is sort of a centering memory-image workout. After that, I divide the next page into quarters and make 4 scribble drawings in 8 minutes (I make the scribbles with my left hand, and draw with the right). It takes a little over ½ hour, faster if I drink more coffee… Then I think of titles for each one.
If I’m working on a character, like in ARF History, I’ll actually write out a character study/backstory. I wrote a backstory for the dog in H-H-How will I ever tell Brad. (Really. Brad, it turns out, was a real @#$%.) The back and forth of writing and drawing helps to create layers of meaning in each piece that make them more fun to do.
Once ass has been in the chair for a while, I hoist it up and take it for a walk. And then I notice what I notice. The run-over masks, clouds, birds (why do robins always run across the street, like, do they forget they can fly?), people walking dogs, sounds, smells, what the air feels like – all of that becomes part of the creative database.
When I’m in a real rut, I do something to charge my creative battery, like the Lynda Barry workshop. I just signed up for an online making Haiku comics class – just for a jump-start. It might not be exactly what I end up doing, but – something I tell my students: It’s easier to change direction once you’re moving.
PDvB: Do you ever work in other media?
BN: I work in charcoal, ink, oil, watercolor, acrylic, and collage. In my Redshift series, I used a mix of many different elements. One of my favorites, Uncertainty, uses collaged wasp’s nest paper (a friend gave me a fallen wasps’ nest) and EKG tape that I got from a local cardiologist’s office. I painted images in oil on that collaged surface. Others in that series use ripped up phone bills, dog hair (I have in abundance), ripped or woven cancelled checks, the subheadings for the wedding chapter in Emily Post’s Etiquette, cut/woven sheet music (Chopin, because: lots of notes), police incident report forms (a journalist friend from Philly gave me a book of them), a copy of the official diagram of a baseball field, and yellow “police line-do not cross” tape.
I also create videos of the making of some of the pieces, then write a casual voice-over, so video has become another, more recent medium for me.
PDvB: Do you have any hobbies?
BN: I love animals. I’ve shared my life with dogs (and cats) since I was a little kid; I drove my parents crazy until they got me a puppy. I waste – I mean, spend – time watching birds. I kayak (I live near a lake) and look for turtles, and the dog and I enjoy watching the foxes or groundhogs that live under the shed. I worked at the San Francisco Zoo years ago, and handled many wild animals, some of which terrified me as a child: snakes, lizards… etc.
I guess another major hobby right now is tennis. I played as a kid, and then started again 30 years later! Part of a healthy creative life for me is to be physically active, even if it’s walking. I also love to travel. I started baking last year, a hobby that was so successful I gained 10 pounds, so I had to stop.
PDvB: Any obstacles you had to overcome to do what you are doing today?
BN: That is an interesting question. I think the biggest obstacle I’ve had in my life is one that so many others have: a lack of confidence. My father could do anything. I couldn’t imagine being as creative as he was, even though he encouraged and appreciated my work from the very beginning. I realized recently that my sensibilities are different, that my job is just to do the next drawing, paint the next painting. I tell my students all the time to think of each piece as a step on a path, not as an end in itself. You make something, then you make the next thing. Some work out; some don’t – but, really, much of the time, we don’t know. Some of the Dailyscribble drawings I finished after fishing them out of the trash can ended up being the most popular.
Another obstacle was the whole “taken seriously as a woman artist” thing. It’s better than it was, but not equal yet. When I did paintings involving elements of my life (like multitudes of male artists) gallery directors dismissed them as “diaristic,” because they had a more female point of view. When I transferred from UARTS (Philadelphia College of Art) to Cornell, the head of my department, whom I’d known for years, told me that it didn’t really matter where I went because I’d just get married and have kids and “forget about all this art stuff” anyway. He had previously complimented me by saying that I “paint like a man.”
When I first started, I worked for ad agencies, making a lot of money per hour, but was so exhausted when I got home that I couldn’t do any of my own art. After grad school, I started teaching as an adjunct at Stockton, and I’ve been teaching ever since. Teaching has helped me articulate my own ideas about art and art-making, and it doesn’t sap my creative energy. In fact, my students give me energy; one of teaching’s many rewards.
I tell my fine art students to be very careful about accumulating “stuff,” because the stuff costs money, then you need to find a job that pays enough for the stuff, then you don’t have time or energy for art any more.
PDvB: Any advice for people regarding expressing themselves artistically?
BN: Oh, man… too much.
Doodle! Get your hand moving – use a pencil, pen, crayon, brush… doesn’t matter. What matters is to draw by hand. Writing and drawing by hand builds neural pathways, helps memory, and is so good for (unfrying!) your brain!
When you’re a little kid, you know that all your art is fantastic, refrigerator-worthy. And then when you hit the ripe age of, like, 7, a classmate laughs at your drawing of a nose – so you figure you’re no good at it and you stop trying. The thing is, nobody is good at anything without practice. Seriously, we don’t judge ourselves as harshly if we pick up a saxophone or a tennis racket – and can’t immediately play well.
PDvB: I’m gonna share with our readers here, two very SHORT VIDEOS which I think speak to that creative process of letting go and not judging. The first is called Mona’s Mantis-An Affair to Dismember. The second is called “Unexpected Gusts.”
BN: Your art is like your signature; it is unique. Our favorite artists are completely original – there’s no one else like them. The job of an art teacher is to educe – to bring out – that uniqueness, while showing students how to use the artist’s vocabulary (line, tonality, color, shape, design, perspective, etc). I also like to give students lots of creative exercises that help them access their own creative spark.
Drawing or painting representationally is about learning to see what you actually see, not what you think you see. You learn to see abstractly – instead of a face, you see lines, curves, shapes, darks and lights, colors, textures, and their interrelationships. That’s why learning to draw/paint is really learning a new way to see the world. And once you learn, you can draw anything.
If you take judgment out of the picture and lose the “is it any good?” question, you can enjoy the process, and start developing your own way of working. Try different media, different ways of working. Look at lots of great art, even copy great art – that’s what the masters did! I have my comics students copy their favorite comic book art.
PDvB: Any advice for people who might be interested in expressing themselves through painting but don’t know the first thing about it?
BN: I like the idea of having a teacher to show how to use the materials, especially oil paint. Oil, watercolor, acrylic – each requires its own materials and methods. There are many ways to use each medium, and you’ll find, with experimentation, the one(s) that work for you. Also, I always advocate taking a drawing class, because, even if you want to work abstractly, drawing teaches you how to see the world as an artist. Once you learn that, it is with you forever.
I shy away from youtube painting and drawing videos, because I’ve found a lot of incorrect material, or people who only teach their own methodology, who don’t teach in a way that helps students express themselves uniquely.
Art centers, community colleges, and museums have classes taught by working artists, and I think more teachers are working remotely these days (I have this year).
Another piece of advice: Look at lots of work, and try not to look at names until after you look at images. See what draws you in. It may be surprising. Museum collections are online, too, but when you can, look at real work. You see size, texture, color, brushstrokes, etc. when you stand in front of A Starry Night. You feel it in a way that is not possible, virtually.
PDvB: Any fun factoids about you you’d like us to know?
BN: Yikes. I’m a Starbucks coffee master (used to work there). Claim to fame: I was an extra in a movie (That Night, 1992). I’m the one in the purple bathing suit that walks by as Juliette Lewis and C. Thomas Howell kiss. Then I walk by again. Then again, from the same direction… hello, continuity???
PDvB: Fun Stuff questions I like to ask: a. If you were an animal, which one would you be and why? b. What’s your favorite color and why? c. What’s your favorite food and why?
BN: I’ve actually thought about this, and it’s still hard. A bird, maybe? I love the idea of being able to fly. Maybe an egret or a heron. I get to hang around water looking cool. Maybe an osprey. I love the ocean!
My favorite color has always been blue. Maybe because it has romantic associations: water and sky, a certain softness and depth. You can move through blue.
My favorite food changes all the time. I’m actually thinking of different foods right now and seeing which one makes me salivate. Seafood! I’ve loved seafood ever since I was a little kid. I’d have birthday parties at this crab house that was also kind of a dive bar. 10 little girls in party dresses eating piss-clams and hardshell crabs. I’d give pieces of birthday cake to the waitresses and the grizzled guys at the bar. So, seafood. Huh. Maybe I am an osprey…
PDvB: Can readers send you submissions for your DailyScribbleHow should I tell them to find you?
BN: Yes yes yes!!!! I always need scribbles.
Email me at: barbneibart@gmail.com (that’s the best email these days), or barb@dailyscribble.net
I’m on Facebook as www.facebook.com/mydailyscribble
My website is www.barbaraneibart.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/dailyscribble
AND with one other image… 😉
…that concludes our interview with artist and scribbler extraordinaire for today’s excerpt in our series #Enchanting Discoveries…People Places Things. BEFORE YOU LEAVE, don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my blog! You’ll help boost the algorithm so more people (including ROYALLY FABULOUS YOU) can find my blog and get happiness, optimism & positivity in their inbox! Bisous, Tra la la, and Ta ta ta for now!
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Dame Diane Uniman, Aka Princess Diane von Brainisfried, is an attorney turned motivational speaker, certified positive psychology life coach and award-winning writer. She wrote Bonjour, Breast Cancer-I’m Still Smiling…Wit, Wisdom, and Optimism for Beating the Breast Cancer Blues.
Love the whimsical drawings!