Your Eyes to the World of Soft Pastel Art
Archive for October, 2010
Bold Brush Sept 2010 Pastel Winners
Oct 31st
Last month we saw the trend of increasing number of pastel paintings being submitted and awarded at Bold Brush Painting Competition, but this month the list is a bit shorter. The Outstanding Pastel painting went to Alicia Sotherland and John Philbin Dolan.
One more pastel painting that qualified to FAV15% was by Gaye Adams.
IAPS 17th Statistics
Oct 25th
This is the basic statistics from the recent IAPS 17th web show. I will not attend to comment data since the statistics is always prone to different interpretations. The great majority of the PSA members also have their local pastel societies and that is the confusing moment in this statistic, but for the simplicity sake I treat them as any other society.
72 paintings in the finals out of 850 entries.
27 Societies have representatives in the finals, out of 70 registered as IAPS member.
The Pastel Society of America is the absolute winner with 21 pastels, and 7 of those are in the top 9.
More than one painting is coming from West Coast PSWC (6), Southeastern (5), Canada (4), Colorado (3), Connecticut (3), Maryland (3), Great Lakes (2), New Mexico (2), Maine (2), Adirondack (2), San Diego (2), Mid America (2). There are 12 more societies with one representative.
66 paintings are by USA artists, 4 from Canada, 1 from Europe (Sweden), 1 from Australia.
Landscapes (22), Portrait and Figure (20), Still Life and floral (19), Animals (10), Abstract(1).
My favorite non-awarded paintings on the above collage are from Ted Fuka, Mike Beeman, Colleen Caubin and Donna Yeager.
It would be good to hear your comments on this stats and how you like the exhibited works.
PSNM 19th Pastel Painting Exhibition
Oct 24th
PSNM 2010 winners
Update Oct 27th. This is not a correct post. Presented winners are from 2009 and new winners will be announced at the grand opening on Nov 5th. Sorry about this!!!
The Pastel Society of New Mexico has had juried exhibitions annually since 1991. Over the years the show has come to be regarded as one of the best in the USA, attracting artists from all over USA, as well as Canada and Europe. Judges and Jurors have included many of the best known pastel artists working today. The Society is having their prestigious 19th exhibition on November 5 – 28, 2010, at the Hispanic Arts Center at EXPO New Mexico in Alburquerque. Among the 2010 award-winners are Bill James, winner of first-place with Dancer in Red; Sarah Blumenschein, second-place winner for Reflections in a Copper Kettle; and Paul Murray, third-place winner for Monolith.
News via the Pastel Journal blog.
Deborah Bays, IAPS 17th Web Show Winner
Oct 22nd
For the first time The International Association of Pastel Societies has organized the web show and you can see it on the society website.
There were record number of entries this year, over 850, and 72 were accepted for the exhibition. The show chair was Liz Haywood-Sullivan, and jurors of selection were Lorenzo Chavez, Margaret Evans and Bill Hosner.
The judge of awards, Claudia Seymour has chosen 9 award winners from the accepted entries. Her comments about the top 5 award-winning images are included on the web site.
1. Deborah Bays
2. Brian Bailey
3. Marla Baggetta
4. Jane Christie
5. Sally Strand
HM Mary Aslin
HM Robert Carsten
HM Vianna Szabo
HM Bonnie Williams
Marie-France Oosterhof: the “Get Dusty” Winner
Oct 20th
Marie-France Oosterhof
The Pastel Guild of Europe has announced the winner of the monthly challenge “Get Dusty”. The theme for September 2010 was colored glass.
Marie-France Oosterhof is living in the homeland of pastel art – France. She studied pastel with the Société des Pastellistes de France – particularly with David Hervelin and Alain Bellanger, and she studied oil painting at the Belgian school of Béatrice Cols. Born in a cosmopolitan family, Marie-France has traveled the world over and she is inspired by those faraway countries as well as her local surroundings of Provence. You can read an interesting interview with Marie-France in the October issue of the Pastel Scribbler.
Lynn Freed and Richard Levine: Finalists in the International Artist Magazine
Oct 13th
Lynn Freed
Lynn Freed was the finalist in the Still Life & Floral competition in the latest issue of the International Artist magazine. Lynn used to work as a designer and fabricator of ornamental elements for fine restaurants, hotels, and casinos. She also worked for some time for Hollywood on the set of “Matlock”, the new “Adam 12″, “Little White Lies” with Ann Jillian, and “Rhythm Nation” with Janet Jackson. Lynn determined to return to painting and made her entrance into the fine art world doing Southwest themes in pastel.
Another finalist with pastel painting in this issue was Richard Levine, but unfortunately I could not find information about his work on the Net.
Featured Pastel Artist: Penelope Milner
Oct 6th
Penelope Milner is a well established and distinguished artist who has produced a diverse range of work in a variety of mediums. However she has tended to work more with pastels and has exhibited both with the Pastel Society in London and at the Society de Pastellistes in Paris. Penelope is a member of the French Pastel Society and was awarded the great honor of “Maître pastelliste” in 2009. She was recently featured in the Special Pastel Edition of the French Magazine “Pratique des Arts”.
Penelope offers pastels courses in landscape and portrait technique from her studio in Catus, France. Here is how Penelope describes her work:
Penelope Milner
“Light has always been of primary interest in my work. Often the sky is merely suggested; reflected in water or in tarmac or in the violet cliffs when the sun is low. In the market scenes I am attracted to the deep reds and oranges which reflect through the parasols and cast their light on everything around. I often choose subjects which allow me to exploit this love of reflected colour; water, ice and polished surfaces. In my more recent pastels I am exploring the reflections of artificial light where the pavements are wet with rain. I am also becoming interested in conveying the sense of figures in motion. In these paintings shapes are vague and hard to decipher. People merge into the shadows forming solid or broken shapes.”
Edward L. Rubin, The Annunciation
Oct 3rd
The online gallery Infinity Art Gallery has announced winners of the Figurative Art Expo 2010. The first place this time was the pastel painting “The Annunciation” by Edward L. Rubin. You might have noticed this beautiful and unusual painting on this blog in the Pastel 100 Figure competition for 2010.
Emmy Award winning Production Designer Edward L. Rubin has lived in Paris, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Santa Barbara. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with honors from the University of California, Berkeley, and he holds a Master of Fine Art degree from Carnegie-Mellon University.
As a Fine Artist, Edward studied etching and lithography at California State University Long Beach and drawing and painting at the Academie de Port Royal in Paris, France. From 1991 through 1997 he had a studio space at the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. During this time he developed his mastery of soft pastel on paper. Edward now lives in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles.
As a Production Designer and Art Director for film and television, Edward has worked on over fifty shows. He won an Emmy Award for Art Direction in 1997 for “Cinderella,” starring Brandy and Whitney Houston.
Rolf Armstrong Pin-up Pastels
Oct 1st
Rolf Armstrong "Hello Everybody"
Rolf Armstrong (1889 – 1960, USA) is by many considered the father of the Pin-up art. He is the best known for the calendar girl illustrations he produced for Brown & Bigelow.
Armstrong attended the Art Institute of Chicago, and after a trip to Paris in 1919 to study at the Académie Julian, he returned to New York and established a studio.
He always worked from life, never using photographs, and consequently met the great stars of the 20’s and 30’s, who came to pose for his portraits (Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn, to name a few). His pastel paintings appeared on many pieces of sheet music, as well as on the covers of many magazines. His pastel illustrations set the glamour-art standard for feminine beauty that would dominate the genre for the next four decades. With a pastel palette of 3600 colors, Armstrong worked with models in his Manhattan studio, creating enormous originals (typical size 39″ by 28″), surviving examples of which are today among the most valuable pin-ups.
The pastel painting above is one of the artist’s most widely distributed images. It has been used in playing cards, advertising blotters, notebook tablets, calendars and prints in all sizes and configurations.
Barbara Benedetti Newton
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