I am the new guy at the Pastel Society of America, having been juried in last year. My "Pastelagram" arrived in the mail yesterday, and I provide a link to this attractive newsletter here. It's in a PDF format. If you can't get the link, go to "publications" from the home page of the PSA link.By way of providing more understanding of the PSA, I will add the following quote. It has some "good to know" statements about the medium that I have chosen to focus on:
“In the third quarter of the 19th
century, Degas’s startlingly
inventive use of pastel, and his
dedication to its brilliance,
beauty and seemingly endless possibilities,
rescued this extraordinary
medium from being relegated to a
footnote in art history. Exit Degas,
and the prominence of pastel was
eclipsed. Until, in the third quarter
of the 20th century, 1972 to be
exact, the reputation of pastels was
revived yet again by the forceful and
farsighted efforts of Flora Giffuni,
who in that year founded the Pastel
Society of America.
This fall, with the stunning
work on view in the Bernhard
Gallery of The National Arts Club,
the Pastel Society of America’s 34th
Annual Exhibition proclaims that
one of our earliest goals — “to focus
attention on the Renaissance of pastel”—
has been successfully
attained. No longer a medium in
search of itself, pastel now stands on
its own as the vibrant, protean material
it truly is. It has matured, proven
its lyrical and muscular talents, and
outstripped the epithet
“Renaissance” that once rightfully
touted the reemergence of a resource
that had been marginalized and misunderstood
for too long. We can
finally get beyond the slightly defensive
impulse to praise a pastel in
terms of how its pictorial qualities
compare to an oil painting, and simply
praise the outstanding qualities
of pastel work.” Diane Rosen, PSA
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4 comments:
Casey!! I'm so excited. Now I know who you are! These paintings were in the Pastel JOurnal last month and I LOVED THEM then and of course now!
So happy you are blogging and we get to see more of your daily work. I really like this post about the re-emergence of pastel. I subscribed to PJ because my oil pastel teacher, George Shipperly was featured. OPs are a VERY marginalised media. I hope people will begin to accept and appreciate all pastel work.
Thanks for sharing the link. I'm off to visit it.
Congrats on being juried into the PSA. Quite an honor.
Hi, Lindsay. Glad when a post can be an inspiration. That's right, your blog does have a lot of nice oil pastel work.
I have a couple of OPs that I did hanging in my kitchen, and I love the medium. Although, I don't use it much, since I have been so focused on a "body of work".
I can't argue with the split from soft pastel and oil pastel, as they are so different in so many ways. If it helps, I am constantly asked (or told) about my oil pastel works, when patrons are looking at my soft pastel works!
"Oil pastels, right?" So, I guess that the profile of the oil pastel medium is way up among the layman. That's a good thing.
Thanks for the good word, Ed. I don't put much emphasis on technique, but that's certainly what the peerage look at in juries like this. After a few years, the techniques just come from repetition.
Also, my first interests in joining a society were well received, which was a good feeling. Now, an acquaintance of mine has taken over at the Northwest Pastel Society, and it has really improved and taken off. So, now joining that one is on the "to do" list.
Anyone out there have good results for their career by joining these societies?
FYI, do download that Pastelagram PDF file if you're a pastellist. It seems like a Pastel Journal redux, but it turns out to be more in-depth.
Read the article on artistic growth.
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