Your Eyes to the World of Soft Pastel Art
Posts tagged IAPS
Featured Pastel Artist: Barbara Benedetti Newton
Mar 14th
Barbara Benedetti Newton was born 1943 in Puyallup, Washington, and attended Art Institute of Seattle. Barbara began her professional art career as a fashion illustrator in 1965. Working exclusively in colored pencil for more than a dozen years, she became one of the masters of the medium and co-authored Colored Pencil Solution Book, published in 2000. In 2002 she began exploring other mediums and has been working primarily in soft pastel since then. Making the transition from a precise, time-consuming, transparent medium to spontaneous, fast-paced, opaque soft pastel has been a journey of discovery. With a change of medium, Barbara also departed from her trademark light-filled still life subjects to impressionistic landscape scenes. Barbara has authored articles in American Artist Magazine, The Artist’s Magazine and International Artist Magazine. Her work has appeared in all editions of the Best of Colored Pencil series and as a feature article in The Pastel Journal magazine. She is past president of the Colored Pencil Society of America, a Signature Member of the Northwest Pastel Society, the Pastel Society of the West Coast, and has been awarded Master’s Circle membership in the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS).
Barbara is a very active blogger and has many interesting posts for general public. A pastel demo can be found at the Mighty Art Demos
“For me, painting is a journey of discovery from challenges of mastering the medium to contemplation about my message. I portray natural and man-made objects in a light filled environment. Presenting a variety of relationships is facinating to me – color to form, object to subject, shadow to light. I combine surface characteristics, color, and attention to detail to portray the spare elegance of ordinary objects and everyday scenes through contemporary realism. My most recent work has been creating landscape paintings through the luscious color and buttery texture of soft pastel.”
William A. Schneider, IAPS 19th Web Show Winner
Dec 26th
The International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) has organized the second web show and you can see it on the society website.
The show chair was Paula Ann Ford, and jurors of selection were Alain Picard, Christine Ivers, Phil Bates. The Judge of Awards was Denise LaRue Mahlke. To see the winning paintings click on the artist name.
1. William A. Schneider
2. Dan Michael
3. Kim Lordier
4. Marj Lightle
5. Jennifer Rowe
HM: Mary Aslin
HM: Daggi Wallace
HM: Margaret Dyer
HM: Jeannette Cuevas
Daggi Wallace Non-Profit Project
Apr 15th
Daggi Wallace is a pastel painter born in 1962, in Berlin, Germany, currently living in Dallas, Texas. Primarily self-taught, she had her first painting lesson at the age of five and continues her studies through workshops and classes as well as many museum visits during her frequent travels to Europe. Her pastel paintings have been juried into many exhibitions including the IAPS and PSA and the awards have included Best of Show, Awards of Excellence and Purchase Awards in regional and national juried exhibitions.
In 2010 Wallace started a non-profit project called “Moni’s Kids”, painting portraits of children in need and using the proceeds to deliver aid to the children portrayed. The first series of Haitian children was exhibited in Miami in November 2010. To learn more about Moni’s Kids, please visit Daggi’s website.
“Painting portraits to me is all about exploring our shared humanity, the connection we have to each other and our common Source. Each face tells a story and communicating this to others is my goal. As these portraits are given new homes my hope is to bring the world outside our own little circles a little closer.” ¨- Daggi
Daggi was recently elected as a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America.
Clark G. Mitchell Pastel Demo
Mar 14th
I was fortunate enough to visit John Pence Gallery in San Francisco and see the pastel paintings by Clark G. Mitchell. Beside a few smaller landscapes there was one huge beautiful pastel painting, bigger than me and I’m sure the biggest pastel painting I’ve ever seen. Clark is a pastel artist with a B.A. in Fine Arts from Colorado College. He has been the feature article on several publications such as American Artist and The Pastel Journal. Clark is well known for his pastel landscapes: a teacher for over twenty years, he conducts both studio and plein air workshops. His studio is in California’s wine county Sonoma. If you will be a lucky participant at the IAPS convention in June you can still catch Clark’s 2 day workshop.
On the Artshow site you can find one of his old pastel demos.
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.
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
IAPS 16th – Accepted Pastels
Sep 1st
The 16th IAPS Juried Exhibition was taking place in The Flora B. Giffuni Gallery, Ohio, USA from July 11-Aug 29, 2010. For all of you who haven’t had a chance to see the exhibition (me included) take a look at the left column and you will find the accepted works with links to all artists.
IAPS Master Circle 2010
Jul 26th
The International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) Master Circle was created to honor those artists whose work has been accepted and/or given awards in a specific number of IAPS Exhibitions and IAPS Convention Catalogue Cover Contests.
Newly qualified artists for IAPS Master Circle (Medallion will be awarded in Spring 2011) are:
Phil Bates, Christine Bodnar, Linda Gross Brown, Bill Canright, Kathryn Hall, Claudette Gamache, J. Kay Gordon, Marcia Holmes, Tatijana Jacenkiw, Janis Krendick, Alice Laputka, Sangita Phadke, Maggie Price, Lisa K. Stauffer, Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Vianna Szabo, Sharon Will.
IAPS 16th Juried Exhibition
Jul 16th
The 16th IAPS Juried Exhibition is taking place in The Flora B. Giffuni Gallery, Ohio, USA from July 11-Aug 29, 2010. The jurying is completed and the honors went to Ruth Hussey (Prix de Pastel) for Confrontations (see image on the left); Cuong Nguyen (Gold) for Violin and Tulips; Lorraine Trenholm (silver) for The Flow; Sally Strand (bronze) for Breeze;
The honorable mention winners were Edward Kennedy for Heise; Jane McGraw Teubner for Evening Light; Terri Ford for Barn in Morning Light; and Barbara Benedetti Newton for Tuesday’s Child. You can see a slideshow of all the selected works on the IAPS website or directly on Picasa.
The jurors who selected these 36 paintings for the show were Alan Flattmann, Liz Haywood-Sullivan and Jimmy Wright. The IAPS president Maggie Price was in charge of assigning awards.
If you have missed this IAPS show you still have time to apply for the 17th juried exhibition which will be web based for the first time. The deadline is September 15th, and here is the prospectus.
Tucson Pastel Society
May 27th
The Tucson Pastel Society is a new society run by Becky Neideffer, who’s work you could have seen at the last Pastel 100. Becky and other Arizona pastel lovers started the society in January 2010 and they look like a very lively group of artists. They have monthly meetings, monthly newsletter and they have joined the IAPS. This month they got visit and presentation from Brian Freeman, and last month from Phil Starke. Preparation for the first members’ exhibition is ongoing and we hope they will share it with us once it happens.







Barbara Benedetti Newton

