Presentation at Visions in the Cafelix Courtyard
Personal
I suppose you could say I’ve been an artist practically all of my 67 years. I could draw pictures before I could even write my name. I come from a very artistic family. My maternal grandfather was an interior decorator in Budapest, Hungary around the turn of the 20th century. He continued in that trade for several years after coming to the United States in 1906. His specialties were decorative plaster work and faux finishes. My paternal grandfather was a cabinet maker who made violins and inlaid wooden boxes as a hobby. We have two of the violins and my sister has two. He made seven in his lifetime. My mother was a ceramicist and china painter who, later in life, took up doll making and my father made furniture. My sister is a fiber artist and weaver and is president of the Catskill Artists’ Gallery in Liberty, NY.
And, my wife, Gail, after a long and successful career as a nursing educator, discovered her creative self as a jeweler working in fused glass and beads and as a photographer. Unfortunately, none of the kids have taken up art, even as a hobby.
I have studied at the Delaware Art Museum School, the University of Delaware, the Cleveland Institute of Art and hold a BFA from the High Museum School of Art in Atlanta, GA. I majored in graphic design, with minors in printmaking, painting and photography. I’ve also studied painting and printmaking privately.
I spent about 35 years in advertising and marketing doing everything from corporate communications, publishing and packaging design to direct marketing, product development and manufacturing in the collectibles sector. I have held the titles of Art Director, Creative Director, Copy Chief, Marketing Director, corporate vice president and have owned two successful advertising agencies. I’ve worked on accounts such as Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, Jacobs Mfg. (makers of the Jake Brake we love to hear in the Mexican mountains), Electric Mobility Corporation, many non-profit corporations, cultural entities and was one of the creative directors on the team that created US Sprint Long Distance Telephone Service’s famous “Pin-Drop.”
I retired from advertising and marketing almost ten years ago.
During all this time, from about 1965 on, I have exhibited and sold my fine arts work. First it was in watercolors and then twenty years ago I made the switch to pastels. I still do a few watercolors and acrylics, but the bulk of my work is pastels. I also still produce a few etchings …which you can always come up and see some time.
I have been primarily a studio painter working from photos and sketches. However, faced with no studio for the first time, six years ago in Mexico, I tried painting en plein aire. I would say that now about one half of my work is strictly plein aire. You all know about plein aire painting. That’s where you have the help of every bug and bird within ten miles, dust, wind, rain squalls and hundreds of folks who love to see what you’re doing and then, after they ask if you’re really an artist, they tell you about great aunt Minerva who painted until she was 92 and that their ten year old can do stuff just like you’re doing. So far I haven’t killed anyone. Of course there are exceptions such as the lovely Mexican woman who trudged up the hill we were working on top of yesterday to bring us cold drinks or the woman several years ago who brought me lunch and iced tea when I was painting at the shore in New Jersey.
I’ve participated in well over 75 group shows and have held over a dozen one-person shows. I was one of the founders of the Cruiser Olympia Fund-Raiser show in Philadelphia, PA and am a past president of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, America’s oldest continuously operating art club. I am also the past vice-president of the Artists of Yardley in PA and am an inactive signature member of the North Carolina Pastel Society.
I have run or helped start several successful galleries in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and our own Visions Gallery right here in Cafelix.
I have also taught fine art, graphic design and advertising courses at the college level and for various community art groups and corporate presentations. I have participated in numerous high school career forums as well.
History
Tonight, I am asking a perplexing question. What is the oldest fine arts material in the world? And, we’re not just talking some obscure material that no one ever heard of but, a fine art material that is still in use today and, in fact, has had a renaissance in the last 25 years.
Other than a couple of people that I’ve already tipped off as to what the correct answer is, does anybody have an idea?
This may come as quite a surprise to many of you but, pastels, not exactly as we know them today, but not that dissimilar either, are considered to be the oldest fine art material known to man. Many of the wall and cave paintings in Africa, France, and other places, including some in Mexico, that go back thousands of years were executed with a dry substance which included added pigmentation for color variations. Of course, I would immediately point out that this answers one of the most common questions I get, “How permanent are pastels?” How does 15,000 years work for you? And, the colors are still good.
In fact, several museum studies have shown that pastels, applied on neutral ph papers or board, are more durable and less subject to fading or darkening than oil paintings. They are certainly more colorfast than watercolors and more stable than acrylics. Today pastel paintings have the same stature as oils and watercolors as a major collectible medium.
In my personal experience, Gail and I have kept one of the pastels I did over 15 years ago. Last summer I reframed the piece and when I removed it from the mat, there was no noticeable difference between the area exposed and the area covered by the mat. And the loose dust that falls off does not seem to change the color or intensity of the piece over time.
Tonight, I’m going to try something I’ve never done before. I’m going to try to create a small pastel painting while I tell you all about pastels. I don’t know how this is going to work exactly, but here goes. I start all my paintings with very little drawing. Mostly, I just mark where key elements go. Now, for my car paintings that’s not true. They are carefully drawn and sometimes I even use a projector to get accurate proportions and details. But, not tonight. I’ve got a little photo here of a scene just north of Todos Santos that I’ve painted several times so, I’ll work as if I’m out there by the highway happily painting.
Pastels as we know them today are first described in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci in 1495. Renowned artists such as Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Rosalba Carriera were using pastels to create masterpieces as far back as 1703. Beginning sometime in the 18th century, pastels became a popular medium for portraits and in the mid to late 1800’s Jean Francois Millet revived the interest in pastels as a medium with broad applications. Also in France by the late 1860’s, the Impressionists took pastels in new directions. Think of painters like Manet, Pissaro, the greatest of them all Degas, Mary Cassat, Redon, Lautrec and others.
In America proponents of the pastel medium were artists like Whistler, Weir, Chase, Lawson and Childe Hassam. In the late 1800’s and into the 1900’s Thomas Anshutz, a Philadelphia artist became renowned for his large and very sensitive pastel portraits.
Also in this same period, pastels became the fashionable medium for cultured ladies to learn until watercolors replaced them. The several decades following, saw pastels used primarily as a sketching medium with few practitioners using them as a painting medium.
Here I’ll lay in some colors that will eventually become the sky, the mountains in the background and a mid tone so that I can establish the locations of the prime elements of the image. Of course one of the problems you find with using pastels is that they, of course, smear easily so you have to pretty much paint top to bottom and left to right – if you’re right handed like me.
About the mid-1970’s pastels began to enjoy a revival as a serious art medium once again and their growth has continued unabated. Much of this interest has been generated by the work of Wolf Kahn, Alfred Handel and others. During the latter part of the 20th century many pastel societies were formed and several publications began featuring articles on pastel works. One publication, Pastel Journal, is totally dedicated to the medium
What are pastels?
Of course we are all tempted to say that pastels are chalks. Wrong! Chalk, whether for the blackboards at school or the sidewalks in front of the house are made of limestone. Colored chalks are merely limestone infused with fugitive dyes. And, while some pastels have a slight amount of limestone to create a particular abrative property, they are in actuality sticks of pure powdered pigment combined with an inert binder. The exact characteristics of an individual stick of pastel depends on the type of pastel, the type and amount of binder used and the individual characteristics imparted by a particular manufacturer.
And, there are dozens of manufacturers. My personal favorites are the hard, square sticks of NuPastels and Faber-Castel, Yarka semi-soft pastels and Rembrant soft pastels. I’ll talk more about the qualities and usages of each in just a moment.
You’ll notice that most of what I’m doing initially is done with the square sticks which are the harder ones. In just a few minutes I’ll explain why. You’ll notice that since pastels are opaque I can work dark to light or light to dark depending on what I want the passage to look like.
I also want to correct another common misconception about pastels. Since they are pure pigment they can be as vibrant and brilliant as any other medium. Pastels used as delicate tints indicate the artist’s preference of style and usage and not a characteristic of the material. The name pastel comes from the French word pastiche meaning mixture and has nothing to do with the fashion and interior design industries’ use of the word for indicating soft, muted color.
While I’m at it, let’s debunk a couple more pieces of bad information about what pastels are or are not.
First off, let me add to your confusion just a little and then I’ll try to clear it up. There are two kinds of materials called pastels. They are soft pastels and oil pastels. Now, the soft pastel is not the same idea that I referred to a couple of minutes ago when I mentioned soft Rembrant pastels. Soft pastels in this case refers to any of the dry pastel medium, which is what I use. In all cases whether they are Nupastel, Rembrant, Sennelier, Windsor and Newton or Faber-Castel they are made from pure color pigments mixed with water and an inert binder then rolled or pressed and allowed to dry. The oil pastel also starts with pure pigment but, there the similarity stops. Painting oils and dryers are mixed with the pigment, molded and baked until you have a crayon-like stick which can be applied directly to paper or canvas and then worked with a brush and painting medium or thinner much as you would oil paints. In recent years a new product which is quite similar has been developed called oil paint sticks with much the same properties as the oil pastel. Most pastel shows do not allow oil pastel entries as they are considered an oil painting medium.
I love the greens in pastel sets. They are just wonderful and when our desert shows some green as in the photo I have here, I’m absolutely in heaven.
Finally, before I go on to a short discussion of techniques, supports, etc. let me clear up one last misconception. Earlier I referred to pastels as paintings. Are pastels drawings or paintings? Even pastelists have an on-going argument over this one. In the past, pastels were often used as a sketch or planning medium for more extensive work in watercolor or oils. In fact, that’s how I used them for years until I realized there was a growing interest in the pastels as finished pieces. I won’t deny that pastels are great for fast sketches and the like, please note the next time you see courtroom sketches that they’re mostly done with pastels, but, they are equally appropriate for highly sophisticated finished paintings as I believe the work I have up here will attest. Here’s how I explain it. If you are drawing, you are creating form and tone with lines even when you do shading. If, on the other hand, you are creating form with colors, textures and tonal values, then that’s a painting. Under that definition, I’m a pastel painter.
Let me digress a minute and tell you just a bit about my motivations to paint and why I primarily use pastels. First, I’ve used pastels as a sketching and planning medium for some of my large watercolor works for many years. And, while I was a successful watercolorist I was far from being an exceptional one. I sold plenty of paintings but there was something that just didn’t feel right to me. I finally realized that I liked the lush colors, the ease of handling and the immediacy of eliminating the brushes and palette. It’s just your hand, the pastel and the support. I tried showing some finished pastels about twenty years ago and haven’t looked back since.
Why I continue to paint is pretty simple, too. In my artist’s statement I say, “I paint my own response to a scene or object with the hope that the viewer will get as strong a response as I do, not necessarily the same response, but a strong response.” I feel that I have much to say visually and that my visual messages, while they won’t change the world, they will bring pleasure to those who collect my work. What more can I ask for?
Techniques
Now that you know what pastels are, let’s start talking about how to use them. When you use a pastel what you are basically doing is using abrasion to remove pigment from the stick and deposit it on the surface of the paper or whatever material you are using as your support. Let me show you what I mean.
The paper has a tooth or texture. That texture abrades the stick and pigment is deposited in the texture of the paper. You may have noticed all the dust I have up here. That’s excess pigment and binder that is unable to cling to the paper. The more texture there is, the more pigment can be deposited. The deposit of pigment is also affected by the softness of the stick itself. As you put subsequent layers of pastel on the paper you fill the texture until it is unable to further abrade the stick and no more color can be added to the sheet. That’s why we usually start with the harder stick and progress to the softer sticks which require less abrasion to leave pigment. Sometimes, if you want an overall soft look to your finished piece it will make sense to start with the softer sticks, applying less layers and getting a greater sense of immediacy in the image because you can not create the image with very many more than say two or three layers.
For most of my work I use Cason Mi Tientes neutral ph paper. However, I use the back side of the sheet which is the smoother side. By using the hard pastels for over 60% of the painting effort I can still use multiple layers and create sharp, hard-edge images or lay a detailed base to then finish with softer pastels for a rich, deep layered look. My car paintings are probably almost 90% hard pastels.
Other supports you might consider are sanded papers such as Wallace which feel like very fine sandpaper or papers like Sabertooth on which you would not dare blend with your fingertips unless you are hiding from the law and want to lose your fingerprints. I have also used canvas and masonite board prepared with gesso which has fine sand added to it. A good gesso for this application is Acrylic Ground for Pastels made by Golden Acrylics which is an acrylic base with fine silica in suspension. Pastel Board which has a coating much like a very fine sandpaper and even 600 grit wet or dry sandpaper which is actually ph neutral. Of course, you could also use the intended side of the Canson paper I use. I have samples of a couple of these surfaces up here for you to see after my presentation.
As I’m sure you have noticed there is no white paper up here. Unlike a watercolorist we don’t have to start with white because, like oils, pastels are opaque. In fact, it’s a problem for most pastelists to start with white. You have to have a clear vision of the finished piece in your mind before start since you pretty much finish as you go. If you don’t you’ll be dragging and smearing pastel all over the place and getting generally frustrated and not getting much in the way of good results. By starting with a color and tone on the sheet you can make a better determination of the flow of lights and darks and often gain a greater color sense of the overall piece long before it is finished. I, personally, like to start with a dark warm sheet and lift my painting into the lighter areas. However, by starting with a darker sheet, I am less likely to get dark holes or make my lighter steps too far apart. I might also mention here that I normally throw out the black pastels in any set I buy as I prefer to create my darkest darks with blues, reds and greens.
Another, way in which some pastelists overcome the problems of planning everything in your head, is to use acrylics or watercolors to create a base painting and then work the pastels over that. I have found this very cumbersome and, for me, it defeats the delight I take in the immediacy of having the pastel stick in my hand and working directly on the support. There are no palettes, brushes or other intermediary steps to get in the way of my creativity.
Generally, there are two broad classifications of pastel styles. Of course, like any art, everybody adds their own spin. But, in general there are the markers and the smearers. I’m a smearer which means I blend and shape using my fingers or other blending tools such as chamois or paper blending stumps. Markers rely on the eye to blend their many small marks of color and create paintings with rich exciting textures that often seem to almost move. Smearers, on the other hand, produce a work which, at least in my case, is often mistaken for a watercolor. Either way the richness of the pigments provide the artist with an unlimited opportunity to play with color, form and intensity.
Let me share a quick story. We did the Los Barilles art show a couple of years ago. My art was well received and I even sold one painting while Gail sold several pieces of jewelry. About mid-afternoon, at which point we were both hot and tired, a small lady of indeterminate age came up to our display. She looked at the work and complimented me on the beautiful watercolors. I gently and politely corrected her and explained they were actually pastels. Her indignant reply was, “They certainly are not pastels. I know art and I know what I’m looking at.” I tried again but she remained indignant and immovable. I finally backed off. A short while later she returned with a friend and spent five minutes or so closely studying the work. She finally turned to me and announced that they were indeed pastels and were finely done. Her parting shot left me in almost helpless laughter. She said over her shoulder as she walked off, “You really shouldn’t try to fool people like that.”
One of the things I like about using pastels is that they are quick with no drying times or issues such as that to contend with. My traveling system looks much like the easel you see over there or here (indicate). I use a standard French easel with a drawer which will hold about fifty pastels. I find about thirty to thirty-five colors will give me enough flexibility to work on location very effectively. If there is a color you need and don’t have with you, you can always make a notation and finish that passage back in your studio. I take a few yellows, a few reds and browns, many blues, three or four greys, every green I possess and three shades of lavender. I could spend another hour’s time giving you the rationale for that selection but, that’s another talk or maybe even a workshop.
Note that those lavenders show up as soft shadows in many of my paintings. In fact, another quick story, a fellow artist at a group show told me that the reason I didn’t sell more landscapes was I didn’t use enough lavender and purple. She said people loved those colors and they were all around us. I took her advice with a grain of salt but tried it just the same. It works. No further comment.
I leave my paper loose and held to the work board only with clips as you see there. The umbrella lets me work without direct sun on the paper so that my color sense will be more controlled. I keep a straight edge handy for two reasons. I use it to estimate relationships of both angles and distance and I do use it to draw straight lines when needed. Finally a small towel to wipe my hands as pastels kind of get all over after a while. I stand when I paint outdoors. I keep a travel sleeve in the car so that I can store paintings without smearing them unintentionally. Which brings me to a whole other point.
I am often asked how I preserve the surface of the painting when it is complete. The question is usually, “What do you spray on the painting when it is done?” The answer is, “Nothing.” That’s right, nothing. Sprays change the colors, the tones and the texture of the painting. In other words, it screws the whole thing up. I store my paintings in these glassine sleeves until I’m ready to frame them. Then they are framed in neutral ph mats and put behind glass or Plexiglas. I also use the undercut mat. This is a double mat with the one closest to the painting being a larger opening than the top mat, thus providing a channel for loose powder to drop into. You’ll see that when you look closely at my framed pieces.
Let me tell you just a little about my studio set up. I use a large, stable floor easel set at about a 30 degree angle. I sit to paint in the studio. To my right is a large table with a white surface. I keep about 350 colors available in the studio and work under daylight, color-correct lighting. A small note on my studio; there is always music playing.
I do my own framing and hand-cut my mats without benefit of a matte cutter. Finally my paintings are backed with brown paper and wired for hanging. I buy mostly ready-made frames or rework second hand frames when possible.
I am just now embarking on plans for making prints of some of my more popular subjects and also a series of note cards with the vehicle themes.
So there it is and I’ve just about got the painting done, too. We talked about pastels as a historic medium. We’ve talked about modern pastels. We’ve talked about supports, finishes, mats and framing, the things I call the care and feeding of pastels. Now, it’s your turn. What haven’t I told you that you’d like to know about?
