Pastel Ascendance

By the Heath Place
April, 2008
8.5" x 7.25"
Pastel

Casey Klahn

The Plein Air Project at pastelsblog (Pastel) is finally out of the door and basking in the sun. Well, not today, when it's raining. Tomorrow, the forecast is for snow again! Now you know why I had to get out on the weekend while the getting was good!

The Plein Air Project, at Pastel, has been linked to the Wolf Kahn Project at this blog. The main reason is that WK is interested in nature, and I am trying to infuse a little more nature in my own art. Also, I love Kahn's drawing style, and wish to learn from it. I notice that I am straying a bit from that, and want to get back to studying the master's scribbley drawings. Perhaps I'll have to make a few trips with sketchbook only, or take along a few images by Kahn for reference.

Kahn Bio

The famous American, Wolf Kahn, is an octogenarian who lives in Vermont, and has been involved in the New York art scene for over fifty years. His family fled Germany in 1939 to escape Naziism.

He is considered a member of the "New York School", or a second generation Abstract Expressionist, and studied under Hans Hoffman. His art is collected by top tiered American museums, and is represented by several noteworthy galleries, including the Ameringer-Yohe in NYC.

Mr. Kahn's career can be explored through a number of books, including
Wolf Kahn's America and Wolf Kahn Pastels.

My own affinity with Kahn's work has no relation to our name similarity. When I took up landscape painting, I realized that I had an academic understanding of color, but little experience with it. Did I have that natural ability, or knack, for making colors "sing" that some artists have? There was only one way to find out.

I knew, by the way, that my mother had a way with colors. She wasn't a painter, but she knitted and did various other crafts. My own path was to look intensely at Wolf Kahn's works and seek to understand what he was doing with color that stood out.

Also, the flattened perspectives and vertical lines speak to the formal qualities of modern art, which interests me greatly. One trick I used early in my research was to take a color composition of Kahn's, and turn the wheel one color to the left or right and see what could be done. After doing a few paintings this way, I just evolved my own color ideas. Walked on my own, so to speak.

It bothers me not the least that my pastels look much (or something) like Kahn's artwork. He is a noted master, and derivation is the natural path of art. I am interested in the vision of current artists who are focused on color first. What makes them authentic? Is the contemporary colorist work saying anything that the fauves didn't already say?

My pastels are more like Kahn's oil paintings than his pastels. I am interested in the medium of pastel to the extent that it offers some very new and current content to the art world. Kahn's pastels are more in the realm of drawing. And they are the best of drawing - loose, free, formalistic, and new. They do, however, smack of the traditional study-for-a-painting methods that have been a hallmark of pastel work for years. Nothing wrong with that. Drawing is the original art, and must be connected to the past somehow.

New School Color
Wolf Kahn dot Com

Sketch & Bio

Distant Ridge Sketch
6" x 7"
Pastel on Sketch Paper
Casey Klahn

It has been mentioned that I should differentiate myself from the artist Wolf Kahn, given that I'm doing a Wolf Kahn Project, the similarity of my subjects and style to his, the fact that Europeans may not know this otherwise famous American artist, and the lack of an "l" in his last name.

This post will cover my short biography. The next post will describe Wolf Kahn, the famous American artist, and also will provide a brief on the motivation for this project.

This is another example of the requirements of the artist business, where I should have a bio of myself ready at a moment's notice. I am up to speed on the resume, but I haven't drilled out the short bio, yet. Always something, huh?


My name is Kenneth C. Klahn. The nickname, Casey, is a play on my initials.

Max Klahn, my grandfather, immigrated from Germany around the turn of the 20th Century and pioneered on the very, very rugged and extreme northwest corner of the USA. I was born in 1958 and grew up in the hardscrabble logging town of Hoquiam, Washington, which is known mostly for logging. From the age of four until I graduated high school at age seventeen, I drew in excess of 100,000 drawings. Mostly the figure.

I did complete two of three large correspondence binders from the Norman Rockwell Famous Artist's School Course for Talented Young People when I was not quite a teenager. I co-founded a "Master's" art class for senior high schoolers, cartooned for and co-edited our award winning HS newspaper. Otherwise, I am a self taught artist, and began the fine art profession about ten years ago.

A few other interesting things about me include that I am married to Lorie Teel Klahn, who is a Nurse Practitioner, and we have two young children. We own a small farm in eastern Washington, but don't actively farm.

My work life before fine art included specialty retail sales work at REI, mountain guiding on Mount Rainier, and ten years in the Army National Guard where I was a Captain of Infantry. I have done a modest amount of international travel, and hold a Bachelor's degree in the Bible. I served as a short-term missionary in the deep jungles of Costa Rica, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

Famous Artists School

WK Project "en Plein Air"

Unrecorded But Finished Art

The Wolf Kahn Project continues with my own subjects drawn and painted en plein air. Before, I was copying directly from the master, but now want to build my own library of content. Dovetailing with the WK Project is my Plein Air Project at Pastel, pastelsblog.blogspot.

WK Project Examples

The Wolf Kahn Project has been my attempt to learn, or perhaps re-learn, the free and loose drawing skills that I value. What I mean to say is that I had practiced abstracted figurative drawing for many years, and only put my focus on the landscape in recent years. WK is adept at manipulating nature to fit the needs of the picture plane, and I want to grow in that direction.

While I still want to remain a studio artist, there is the need to get out and see nature. If for no other reason than to add to my catalog of objects for my New School Color works. More buildings, more trees, more landforms are what I need.

Admin Notes:

If you follow my studio progress, you'll note that the wood paneling still adorns my walls, and one wall even has insulation peeking through. With my kids home from school with the sniffles, and my own convalescence from an operation, little remodeling has been accomplished! But, the studio is gradually coming together, which I'm happy about.

The same set of stresses has kept these new artworks from getting official photos taken. That will happen soon, but I add these candids for their newsworthiness.

Kahn Project Report

So far in my Wolf Kahn Project, I feel that I have barely scratched the surface. The following is a mid course review of what I've observed/learned.


Going forward, I will be doing plein air drawings instead of copying the man's works. Let's see what we can do with what we've learned.

More in-depth observation could be made, but with limited time, I'll post this, and add more tidbits as the project continues.

WK Project #4

Wolf Kahn Project
After Wolf Kahn #4
@5" x 7"
Pastel on Paper
Casey Klahn

Wolf Kahn Project Number #3

After Wolf Kahn, #3
9" x 8.25"
Pastel on Rives BFK Heavyweight
Casey Klahn

Scanned and pieced together in Photoshop.

Wolf Kahn Project 2

After Wolf Kahn, #2

6" x 9.5"
Pastel on Paper
Casey Klahn

The Wolf Kahn Project will be posting here at The Colorist instead of at Pastel from now on. My intention has been to keep the general art and process stuff here, and my pastel art (especially "off target" art) over at Pastel.

Also, I am beginning another new topic thread at Pastel, which will be tips & techniques oriented. It will be a toe-dip into teaching basic pastel techniques. My e-mails and comments there have indicated the demand, and so I am going in that direction.

A couple of things that I am discovering about my WK Project are:

• Since my paintings already explore WK's color directions, and since I wish to scan these project drawings, I will be focusing my study on techniques of application, subjects and linear/mass compositional aspects and not much on color.
• The current study is focused on mark making, but as I do this I am made more aware of his broad compositional inquiries.
• Because subject is a big element, I may be moving very quickly to my own original subjects. Those will have objective titles, instead of "After WK," etc.