Pastel Pals' Show

Although I have been too tardy about posting to get this post out before the end of the show, I still wanted to mention a great show I saw in May at the Sunrise Gallery in Burlington, Ontario.  A group of pastel painters who paint en plein air almost every week put together a fabulous collection of their works.  I was so impressed by the variety and high calibre of the paintings on display, it almost made me want to do more painting outdoors, myself, though I know I don't do my best work that way. Shown here are (l. to r.) Jessie Grant, Cathy Cullis, and Ann Kelly Walsh whose work was featured in the show with that of  several others.  I admire the work of all three of these friends. Ann, in fact, was my very first pastel teacher, and it was her throwaway comment to me at my easel "You do know you have talent, don't you?" that gave me the confidence to continue.  I still have the little tonal painting of a pear that was my very first pastel work, completed as the first exercise in Ann's class. And I still like it!  I also recently bought a great small painting by Cathy Cullis for my own collection.  It's a vivid little piece of a small trickle of water zigzagging its way between rocks, titled Winding Down.  I love its intensity and pattern, and the title is my promise to myself in relation to my (non-painting) career--wind it down so I can retire and get painting full time! Jessie Grant is the tireless coordinator of our Pastel Artists Canada show intakes--how she keeps all the images and names and dates straight is a miracle, and throughout it all she stays calm and gracious.  Thank you Jessie!

I hope these friends exhibit together again someday--it was a terrific show, and a great promotion for pastels!

Big Sky Win

The Convention Place within the Whitby Mental Health Centre recently hosted their first invitational art show, juried by the owners of the Station Gallery in Whitby.  The response was enthusiastic, according to the organizers, and the final selection included 40 entries from patients, staff, and community artists.  At a gala opening on May 9, 2009, the award winners were announced, and I'm very pleased to say that my entry Big Sky won third place.  Here is the piece, which will stay on display at The Convention Place all summer.

At the opening, McLaughlin Gallery director David Aurandt (seen below with the first, second, and third place pieces) spoke persuasively about the place of creativity in a balanced life, and congratulated all the artists.  It was a great community event, and I'm proud to have been part of it.

Performing "tree-age"

As in "triage," a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition--but on a tree in a painting! Last night I started on a pastel painting (17.5" x 11.5") inspired by a beautiful moment I experienced early Monday morning, as I was making my weekly commute back to the city from our home in the country.  As I reached the end of our gravel road and cleared a band of trees, I gasped to see the gorgeous scene spread out beside me.  The morning sun was at that fleeting state where it has not yet cleared the horizon, but is sending up shafts of colour ahead of itself, painting the sky with tender pinks and peaches.  Lovely--but what made it special was the water in the deep ditch beside the road, a result of the weekend's torrential rainstorms, that was reflecting the glow in a ribbon of light against the dark grass verge. Happily, I had my camera in the car and was able to grab a handful of shots before the sun rose and changed the effect completely--besides, I really had to go on to work, much as I would have liked to stay and watch the whole show unfold. So, here is the roughed in first phase of the painting, and the results of the alcohol wash I usually do to "melt" the pastel into the paper's surface.  As you can see, this results in a pretty strong dark pattern for the foreground tree and grass panels.  I liked the abstract shapes, so went on to the next stages, adding layers of more subtle colour and value to shape the scene.

It was going along well, but increasingly the tree silhouette was bugging me--it seemed too strong a contrast, and kept drawing my eye away from the water reflection and the distant dawn where I wanted the focus to be.  What to do?  Pastel is a very opaque medium, and I always tell my students: "There's nothing you can do that can't be fixed." However, this time I found the limits of that statement!  After brushing off the dark pastel as best I could (carefully, using a small stiff brush and catching the dust on a paper towel below), I simply used a light yellow pastel to cover the spot, and wet it again with alcohol.  Uh-oh--the tree ghosted through pretty strongly!  I guess it was because I laid in the underpainting with a very deep, rich purple pigment with lots of staining power. So I had two choices--put the tree back in  or find a better way to cover it up.  After some thought, I decided I really liked the painting better without that tree, so onward...

I took a deep breath and washed the whole sky again with alcohol, brushing out the tree shape fairly vigorously. Looking better, especially after I dried it with my hairdryer--I was anxious to see if it had worked.

After that, things went more smoothly.  The sky was reworked, and I moved the painting to finish, and titled it Indrawn Breath to represent both the hush of the moment pictured, and the deep respirations involved in its execution!

A large, a small, and two mediums!

When you find a scene that really inspires you, sometimes it's fun to try it several times, in different sizes and media. Lately I've been wanting to focus on developing my acrylic painting skills, especially larger format canvases, so I recently completed a painting based on a photo I took in Massachusetts early last fall.  My daughter, granddaughter and I took a trip to the Clark Institute in Massachusetts to view a fabulous exhibition (Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness and the Art of Painting Softly), showcasing tonalist painters of the late 19th c.. The exhibition was wonderful and inspired me greatly--well worth the long trip there. The following morning, we were driving down the long steep driveway from the B & B where we'd spent the night, and I suddenly spotted a shaft of sunlight illuminating a large tree that was just turning golden yellow, in the midst of other foliage that was still primarily green.  Of course I had to slam on the brakes (causing consternation to my passengers!) and get a few photos. I mulled over that image all the way home, and found time to interpret it in acrylic just before the end of the year. Here it is; the original (30" x 24") is now at Davis Canadian Arts in Stratford Ontario (see the Sales tab for contact info).

This past month, I was teaching a weekend pastel class in Port Perry (see Workshops tab for some photos--the students did awesome work!), and decided to do a small pastel--I sometimes work at a small painting in order to give the students some breathing space, especially if it's a small class--otherwise they may feel just a bit TOO closely monitored and get tense.  The tree photo was in the pile of photos I bring along for students to use for practice, and I was inspired anew.  I got a good start on the piece that afternoon, and did a little tweaking back in the studio.  Here it is--a small (9" x 6") but mighty work!

So, which do I prefer?  Hmmm--I think they each have merit, but a completely different "feel."  Obviously the larger work is more detailed and more "realistic" as a result, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.  However, the small pastel captures the evanescent moment perhaps better, and has a softer, more dynamic feel. It was interesting to try to capture essentially the same scene in a much smaller format, with a different medium.  Coincidentally, today's twice-weekly e-letter from artist Robert Genn speaks to exactly this process of evolving a work in different sizes and media.  If you aren't familiar with Genn's newsletter, check it out here: http://painterskeys.com/.  It's a terrific inspiration that arrives in your email twice a week, and it does NOT lead to unsolicited spam messages.

This smaller painting will be in the Pastel Artists Canada (PAC) members' show in late May-mid June at Todmorden Mills in the Don Valley east of Toronto. For more information on the show, visit www.pastelartists.ca.

All in the details

A small painting I was doing recently was ok in terms of composition, and I liked the basic concept, but it just didn't have any "life". I mused over it at this stage for several days...

Then, on the weekend I happened to drive past the site where I took the original photo. The difference now was that the light of early morning was streaming through the trees alongside the field--and suddenly I knew what was wrong with the painting--it needed a clearer light source! See how much better it looks with that added...

Later that same week, I prepared several underpaintings using a thin wash of oil paint, a technique learned from Richard McKinley at a workshop last October. I used Turpenoid, a non-toxic turpentine substitute, to thin the oil paints to almost watercolour consistency before blocking in the big shapes and colours for three paintings.

I had watched Richard use this technique in a demo, and after about ten minutes, with a little help from a hairdryer, the oil washes were dry enough to start adding pastel on top. So, why weren't mine drying?? I waited, and waited, and WAITED. Even the next day, the paper surface was still greasy and moist. Hmmm... Eventually the larger piece dried enough that I could complete a pastel painting on top, with some struggle to get the lighter colours to show. The pastel kept "melting" into the oil wash--what on earth had I done wrong? I abandoned the other two underpaintings until I could figure out the problem...

Finally I went back to the notes I took at Richard's workshop--and found the answer! He told us (and I even wrote it down but obviously didn't commit it to memory) that the BLUE can of Turpenoid is what you want--the green can (you guessed it, that's what I have) is unsuitable for this technique. Uh-huh. I don't know what the actual chemical difference is between the two, but you can bet I'll be donating my green can to my husband's shop and seeking out a blue can for pastel underpainting in future!

However, the other two underpaintings did EVENTUALLY dry--and here are the finished pastel paintings.