Saturday 30 October 2010

Contemporary Pastel Landscape Artists

The works included in the the Seventeenth Juried Web Exhibition 2010 of the International Association of Pastel Societies (see International Association of Pastel Societies - 17th Juried Exhibition 2010) were all selected by an international panel of jurors who, as it happened, are all primarily landscape artists in pastel.  I can't imagine that was accidental so maybe there's a push to see more pastel landscapes?
The International Jurors who selected works for this 2010 Web Exhibition were Lorenzo Chavez, (Colorado, USA) Margaret Evans (Scotland)  and Bill Hosner (Michigan, USA).
If you click the hyperlinks below you can view a range of different ways in which renowned pastel artists tackle landscapes around the world.

Lorenzo Chavez - pastel landscapes - available paintings and paintings in private collections.  Lorenzo Chavez was born in New Mexizo and is now based in Colorado and most of the landscapes appear to be local to where he lives.

Lorenzo Chavez - landscape paintings in private collections
Margaret Evans PSA - pastel landscapes - available in galleries throughout Scotland.  Margaret tutors workshops all over the world but has her studio and home base are Perthshire in Scotland.

a selection of the pastel landscapes of Scotland by Margaret Evans PSA

Bill Hosner PSA PSWC - pastel landscapes - available work.  Bill is based in Michigan in the USA.  He's a signature member of both the Pastel Society of America and the Pastel Society of the West Coast and his focus is on working plein air in pastel.

Pastel Landscapes by Bill Hosner PSA PSWC
My personal view as somebody who enjoys working plein air in pastels (although not as much recently as I used to do - see Places) is that pastels are a greatly underrated medium for plein air landscapes.  From beginning to end your work is dry and not susceptible to the impact of variations in temperature or humidity as both oil and watercolour paints are!

However it is a jolly good idea to have a very big cover for your work if it begins to rain!

2 comments:

Debbie said...

Hi Katherine, as ever a good post, but Im trying to get my head around what is contemporary in this expression of landscape? Made today... new colours (no). We say contemporary but Im not seeing anything that hasnt been seen for the last 100 years(?) Enlighten please someone. Deborah - itching to try out pastels.

Making A Mark said...

I'm using "contemporary" in this sense to mean artists living today and producing artwork today ie the literal meaning of the word.

contemporary adj 1 (often contemporary with something) belonging to the same period or time as something. 2 (often contemporary with someone) around the same age as them. 3 modern. noun (contemporaries) 1 someone who lives or lived at the same time as another. 2 someone of about the same age as another. contemporarily adverb.
ETYMOLOGY: 17c: from Latin contemporarius, from con- same + tempus time


If we were talking about "contemporary" in terms of style I guess we could be looking a film of an installation of a pastel artist who was a human sculpture arranging their pastels in their plein air box before deciding to make a few marks on a canvas and calling it art!

I jest!

One could say that the problem with people using a word like "contemporary" to label art is that goes out of fashion! ;)

Seriously - painting in a "conventional" way has never ever gone out of fashion - and it can still be "contemporary" even if it looks like work which other people have produced in previous decades/centuries.

The fact that's it's not "different" does not make it any less contemporary! :)