PSWC Magazine Winter 2023/2024

PSWC magazine

Pastel Perspectives

From We Talk Art to IAPS - What affects Pastelists

Our Featured Artist

Ian Roberts talks art, design, and composition

Meet the Members

Meet five of our delightful PSWC members

Art School - On Ratios Francesca Droll explains the Golden Ratio

Pa s t e l S o c i e t y o f t h e W e s t C o a s t Volume 15, Issue 3

WINTER 2023/2024

PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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proud sponsor of the Pastel Society of the West Coast

The cure for claustrophobia.

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Subscribe today | 800.610.5771 | pleinairmagazine.com

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The Old Family House in Lipscomb, Albert Handell, 2002, pastel, 18 x 17 in., Private collection, Plein air, Cover September/October 2020 Issue

magazine PSWC Table of Contents

FEATURES Practice Makes Progress The Challenges A Sampling of our 4 challenges in 2023 Featured Artist Ian Roberts talks to Pam Comfort Meet the Members Meet Suzanne Burnell, Julie Ford, Jim Kallenbach, John Sherry, and Avon Waters

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ABOUT ART

REGULARS 8

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From the PSWC President Pam Comfort

Why IAPS? Pam Comfort on the benefits of membership

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Letter from the Editor From Sabrina Hill

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Art School Francesca Droll on the value of the Golden Ratio

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Contributors Who is creating content

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Art Workshops Workshops Coming

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PSWC Housekeeping Here’s who’s new in the Society

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We Talk Art Bonnie Griffith on her Chat series for PSWC

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Letter from the Editor

Dear Pastelists,

Welcome to our new issue of the PSWC Magazine! It’s a new year, time for lots of new inspiration, creativity, and fun.

Our magazine-making family is growing. Pam Comfort is taking on more writing and interviewing, and she is an integral part of planning how the issue gets put together. Laura Pritchard, a gifted fine artist, is also a graphic artist and designer. She brings those talents to the table as she tackles herding all the words and images into a cohesive, printable form. I am so grateful to share these responsibilities!

We are featuring the wonderful art and wisdom of Ian Roberts. His books are nearly mandatory reading for any artist, regardless of medium. Pam sat down with him in the cozy comfort of Zoom and talked all things art. The story is on page 24. Francesca Droll, our chairwoman for PASTELS USA: 99 Voices in Pastel, has put together a fantastic piece for Art School. It is about the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean. It’s a perfect companion for members to refer to when creating layouts for all those new paintings you will be working on in 2024.

We also have five new members to introduce to you. Suzanne Burnell, Julie Ford, Jim Kallenbach, John Sherry, and Avon Waters. These artists are new to the society, but I am sure you will be seeing more of them!

Read their self-penned interviews and check out their websites. You’re welcome!

Finally, we are always looking for writers, artists, contributors, proofreaders (huge need!), people to interview, and people to be interviewed.

Please send us your ideas for articles, suggestions for contests, and feedback about how we are doing and what else you would like to see.

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing.

Making your unknown known is the important thing.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

And as always, happy painting!

Sabrina Hill PSWC Vice President and Editor, PSWC Magazine

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Contributors

Contributors Pam Comfort, President PSWC - In addition to serving as President, I chair the Scholarship Program, one of the ways we support students planning a career in art.

My background is in the field of education. I earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Organizational Management, and retired from my position as Deputy Superintendent of Schools for Contra Costa County in 2018.

Having only dabbled in art and music throughout my life, I discovered after retiring that I loved the immediacy and tactile satisfaction of working with pastels. I am a beginning artist, a juried associate member of the Pastel Society of America, and also a member of several local art associations. I love to travel, and aspire to create art that communicates a strong sense of nature, culture and place. www.pamelacomfort.com

Francesca Droll - Co-Chairwoman of Pastels USA - I’m primarily a plein air painter inspired by the landscapes of Montana, the west coast, and the southwest deserts. I relish in painting in the outdoors and feel more spiritually connected to the landscape being present in it. I also work in my studio, recreating larger works from my on site studies as well as exploring a range of still life setups.

Pastels allow me the ability to use bold flourishing strokes as well as subtle blending to convey mood and motion in the composition. I have 35 years as a graphic designer running an design studio, Abacus Graphics, with my husband and partner, John R. Webster. I just retired in 2022 and am looking forward to devoting much more time and energy to painting. We are located in Bigfork, Montana, on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake.

WANT TO GET INVOLVED? There’s always room for more. Let us know what you want to do, and we’ll find a spot for you!

KEEP IN TOUCH & FOLLOW US!

Laura Pritchard - Graphics and Magazine Designer for PSWC Magazine Laura took a pastel workshop in 2021 from Kitty Wallis and fell in love with the vibrant color and direct application of a hand-held pastel stick. Her subject matter is mainly landscapes and simple still lifes. She recently closed her freelance graphic design business and intends to put a lot more time into art making in 2024. https://www.laurapritchardfineart.com/ Bonnie Zahn Griffith PSWC, Secretary of the PSWC - is a current resident of southwestern Idaho and spends significant time in MT and UT painting throughout the year.

She participates in numerous plein air events in the western US, judges competitions and offers workshops in pastel techniques, both studio and plein air. Her work is represented by galleries in MT, ID, OR and WA. Collectors include corporate and private throughout the US, Canada and Australia. Bonnie’s work can be seen on her website www.bonniegriffith.com

“Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.” ~Salvador Dali

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PSWC Magazine

We. Are. Pastelists.

Join the most dynamic pastel group in the USA for less than 25c per day You don’t have to live on the West Coast to become a member. With PSWC members located around the US, as well as international members, the Pastel Society of the West Coast offers a strong voice for expanding the presence of soft pastel as a major fine art painting medium.

PSWC was organized in 1984 to promote pastel artists and the medium of soft pastel. Today, we are one of the most recognized pastel societies in the country, with an ever-increasing international presence. Benefits include: Pastels USA Annual Exhibition | Members Only Online Competition | In-person and Virtual Workshops by Noted Pastel Artists | PSWC Magazine | PSWC Social Media Exposure Opportunities | We Talk Art Interview Series | Regional In-person Events | Online Demonstrations | Free Online Gallery | Membership in IAPS. All levels of artists are welcome to join.

Our goal is to promote the art of pastels through education and competition and also to make it easier for you to become a well-connected, well-informed pastel artist. We look forward to including you on our Society’s roster!

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PSWC Magazine

congratulations to the Pastel Society of the West Coast and all the Artists ! in the Pastels USA 2020 Show!

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From the Desk of the President

From the Desk of the President

by Pam Comfort

The past year has been a good one for your Pastel Society of the West Coast! Our annual Members Only Online Show (MOOS) was a resounding success, the We Talk Art series included engaging interviews throughout the year, our quarterly General Membership meetings featured demonstrations with several esteemed teaching artists, many of you participated in the four painting challenges, we hosted and have scheduled valuable online workshops, regional representatives hosted plein air and other events, and our premier event, Pastels USA: 99 Voices in Pastel showcased work from some of the very finest pastel artists in a beautiful exhibit at the Haggin Museum in Stockton, California.

Prior to assuming the role of President, I designed and sent out a survey to each of our approximately 600 members. Although a small percentage of you responded to the survey, we were able to obtain some helpful feedback and identify some themes that came up in the responses.

Here are some things that were mentioned and that we are continuing to address: •

Programs for emerging and intermediate artists

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Interaction with other societies

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Continued attention to the production of our beautiful magazine

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Revisiting the 99 Voices 3 Category format

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Monthly or quarterly members thematic challenges

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Emailed information about events

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Reminders about membership benefits

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Zoom meetings with artist demonstrations

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Continued attention on local events

You may anticipate that your hardworking volunteer board members will be continuing to look for ways to enhance our offerings and take your feedback into consideration. All of the events from this past year will continue in 2024, and we are exploring additional ideas to increase engagement opportunities.

You will help us if you keep your membership and contact information current, visit the PSWC website to stay up-to-date about events (www.pswc.ws), provide us feedback, and reach out if you’d like to offer a little bit of your time for the good of the cause. We still have a few board and committee positions open and appreciate your referrals.

On behalf of the board, I offer you all warm wishes for peace and happiness in the new year.

Be inspired!

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“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

Edward Hopper PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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We Talk Art

We Talk Art is a quarterly (or more) Zoom presentation for members of the PSWC. Bonnie Zahn Griffith chats with well-known artists and others in the art world in an informal virtual setting.

Bonnie Griffith

These distinguished guests share their stories, processes, tips and more. The series features “live” interviews, so participants may post questions and comments during and after the interview.

The link to the Zoom meeting for each session is posted on our website, our Facebook page, and also sent via eBlast to all current PSWC members.

The most recent interview took place on December 3rd and featured an informative visit with Craig Lemley, the owner of Dakota Art Pastels. Craig grew up in North Dakota, fell in love with the Pacific Northwest in post high school years and graduated 10

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from Western Washington University with a degree in printmaking. He later worked for Daniel Smith Art store in Seattle and subsequently opened three Dakota Art supply stores in Seattle and Bellingham. Later, Craig established the Dakota Art Pastel store in beautiful Mount Vernon Washington and the rest is history!

Dakota Art is a premier resource for all pastel needs, and also offers workshops in their great classroom space. In addition, they have been producing a quarterly online juried show over the past few years. It was a pleasure to visit with Craig who

shared a wealth of knowledge about products offered at Dakota Art. We will be kicking off the 2024 We Talk Art series with Becka Watkins, a multimedia artist from Boise, Idaho. Becka has had some experience with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and we thought this could be a good learning interview with someone who has sold art on this platform even though she has abandoned this practice. We know that so many artists get offers online for selling their work for NFTs and since many of us are not educated in this revenue stream it was thought this could be an interesting topic. This visit on We Talk Art will be January 21st at noon PST. Don’t miss this Zoom visit with Becka as we learn some facts about NFTs. If you missed any of the interviews from 2022 and 2023, you may find links to those recordings on our website at https://pswc. ws/we-talk-art. Prior interviews included conversations with Clark Mitchell, Mitchell Albala, Aaron Schuerr, Natasha Isenhour and Dug Waggoner. \

We Talk Art

Retail Shop at Dakota Art

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The Painting Challenges

Practice Makes Progress: The Value of a Painting Challenge Pamela Comfort

that, we thought the results were rather impressive!

Barbara Archer

Our February challenge was called Portraits with a Twist! It was a 10-day challenge for participants to create a portrait in a realistic or impressionist style, then twist it up in a more abstract style. The artists who completed the challenge, and were randomly selected to win $100 each were Tamra Sanchez, DuAnn Wright and Renee Carter.

One of PSWC’s s p o n s o r e d activities is our quarterly Painting Challenges. Four times a year, we invite members to engage in a daily painting practice, often with a theme, in order to help us get out of our ruts and in front of our easels. Members may register for the challenge on our website, and then each day of the challenge, they post their paintings (usually a small study done to explore the theme) on our Facebook page. Anyone who completes the challenge is entered into a drawing for $100. Three winners are randomly chosen.

In this issue, we are showcasing a sampling of paintings that were posted by members. Many of these were done in short periods of time, perhaps 30-40 minutes. Quite a few engaged the artists in exploring techniques, styles or subject matter that took them out of their comfort zone. Given all of 12

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Renee Carter said, “I told my husband that if I happen to win, I’m getting a real pastel box that isn’t a bunch of Tupperware containers! Thinking of a Heilman Box!” DuAnn Wright wrote “Thank you so much for the challenge. I tried things for the first

time and enjoyed the freedom of expression!”

The spring challenge took place in April and the theme was Palette Play. This 10-day challenge was to use an analogous or monochromatic color palette plus one pop of color. Artists were encouraged to try painting subjects they wouldn’t normally paint. Those who stuck with it, and won the drawing for $100 were Karen Glancy, Teresa

The Painting Challenges

to take a nap!”

The biggest challenge came in October, when artists were called upon to create and post 21 paintings in 21 days. Congratulations to everyone who participated in the October 21in21 Challenge and special kudos to those who completed the entire series! Of those who did, a random name picker generated our $100 winners: Rachel Sylvers, Judy Miller and Jacklyn Jean Amerman.

Steinbach-Garcia and Francesca Droll.

Our Lazy Nights of Summer 10-day challenge was in July. Participants painted subjects that included nocturnes and deep shadows. From neon signs to fireflies, artists found ways to depict the life that happens when the sun sets. This challenge resulted in so many lovely nocturnes being posted!

Winners of the random drawing from the pool of artists who completed the challenge were Judy Miller, Dug Waggoner and Barbara Archer. Each of these lucky folks received a check for $100.

A couple of members shared what many of us were feeling. Ann Sanders wrote “It feels like there’s never enough time, but I know how good this is for me!” Tamra Sanchez posted “Thank you so much! I truly had fun getting out of my comfort zone and as each day went by, I became less and less intimidated to just let go.”

In 2024, we will again have quarterly challenges during the first ten days of February, April and July, and the first twenty-one days of October.

Challenges are listed on page 23. To learn more about the challenges and register, visit the PSWC website (www.pswc.ws), under the tab Programs.

Judy Miller posted, “I really enjoyed doing the challenge even though I wanted to quit in the beginning. I loved the theme and the opportunity it gave me to do paintings based on photos.”

Barbara Archer shared, “I was so happy to find this challenge. Just the right timing and length to get me hooked at a time when my muse was wanting

Ann Sanders

Cindy Gillett PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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The Painting Challenges

#PSWC10N10 | #PSWC21N21 | #WEAREPASTELISTS

Bonnie Griffith Tamra Sanchez

Judy Miller

Renee Carter

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The Painting Challenges

Judy Miller

Evalynne McDougall

Jean Vineyard Myers

Rachel Sylvers

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The Painting Challenges

Jennifer Von Bergen

Eve Miller

Madhu Roy

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Pamela Comfort

The Painting Challenges

Anne Spivey Anne Spivey

Bobbye Thompson Viviane Trubey

Francesca Droll

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The Painting Challenges

Bobbye West-Thompson Cindy Gillett

Teresa Steinbach-Garcia Jacklyn Jean Amerman

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The Painting Challenges

Teresa Steinbach-Garcia Leah K. Reed

Steve Lemke

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The Painting Challenges

Dug Waggoner

Dug Waggoner

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Barbara Archer-Baldwin

Dug Waggoner

The Painting Challenges

Ann Sanders

Viviane Trubey

Bonnie Griffith

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The Painting Challenges

A FEW WORDS ABOUT DAILY PRACTICE FROM HIGHLY ACCOMPLISHED ARTIST EVE MILLER The value of a daily practice can result in the elevation of one’s artistic journey. I have the luxury of time, so I can play and explore on a whim. Most days I spend my time involved in creating art. I am very grateful that art found me in my mid-60s. I never had an art class as my family moved from Belgium when I was young and I had to play catch-up and learn English. When I retired from teaching French and Spanish, I quickly tired of golf and tennis on a daily basis. I started to take art classes from the best teaching artists in my area, and the catalysts were the instructors. The Lowcountry panorama where I found myself resonated with me. I wanted to paint what I knew and loved. My disclaimer is to say that I understand the desire to want to create, and I also understand the dilemma of finding time to be creative, realizing that many people have work, family and other obligations that come into play. Hence, I suggest a daily practice — even if it’s only 5 minutes, set a timer if necessary, and show up at the easel. I remind myself that I’m at the easel for the sake of creating not for the creation.

I set an intention every day and I post that on social media because that makes me accountable.

Whether people like it or not — I am very independent of other people’s good opinions .

If you have thin skin, then don’t ask anybody’s opinion and don’t post anything. Just share with those people who make you feel comfortable.

It is crucial to make a choice to build a habit.

I found that once I started a daily practice I knew that doubt was part of the process. With time and patience, my work was accepted into more exhibitions and received more awards.

This gave me more confidence to continue my daily painting practice. That is one measure of the value of a daily practice — certainly not necessary for everyone.

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I suggest the following: • Get outdoors, and observe and look deeply.

• Consider that your studio space is a state of mind that can be anywhere.

• Show up at the easel most days.

• Find random beauty wherever you are and take mental notes of that.

• Be kind to yourself, you can never duplicate nature’s perfection.

• Be accountable to yourself, and share your art without judgment or fear.

• Paint what you love to find your artistic voice, and be in a state of satisfaction when you paint for a more joyful experience.

Lastly, I believe that a daily practice ensures that inspiration and motivation have a chance to marry. Motivation is a process of stimulation to achieve a goal. Why am I painting this? Inspiration is the excitement, and it’s effortless and brings a spontaneous impulse. I see a beautiful sky. I’m inspired. I come back into the studio, go to my easel, and paint from memory, which will free me from all expectations. My wish is that we all paint with purpose and passion.

The Painting Challenges

2024 Painting Challenges CHALLENGE ONE: February 1st - 10th, 2024: Animal Instincts 10-day challenge #PSWC10N10- Create a portrait in a realistic or impressionist style of a pet or wildlife. Keep textures and personalities in mind as you create.

CHALLENGE TWO: April 1st – 10th, 2024: Complementary Colors 10-day challenge #PSWC10N10– Delve into the use of complementary colors to create an interesting work. Use complements to create contrasts when values are compressed, or add vibrancy and visual interest to a painting.

Using complementary pairs like blue and orange, or red and green, in strategic areas of your artwork can make elements pop and draw the viewer’s attention.

CHALLENGE THREE: July 1st - 10th, 2024: Sunshine and Shadows 10-day challenge # #PSWC10N10Summers days are filled with contrasts of bright sunshine and deep shadows, or dappled sunlight through the trees. Capture a bit of summer in this challenge.

CHALLENGE FOUR: October 1st - 21st, 2024: The Big Challenge, 21 paintings in 21 days #PSWC21N21–.

Great way to get some holiday gifts done or ready to sell. You may even create the painting you enter in MOOS in 2025!

Here are the rules: Members Only Any subject Any size – though we recommend 6”x6” to 9”x12” for the sake of speed Mostly pastels Must post every day to be entered into prize-drawing Quick studies are OK New work only Posting Rules: •

Please post on our PSWC Facebook Page with a commentary about the painting (a paragraph is plenty)

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Include Hashtag at end of post #PSWC10in10 or #PSWC21in21

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You may comment on other artists’ paintings, but this is not a critique. No negative comments.

Suggestions for process: •

Limit painting time- We suggest 30-45 minutes.

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Limit palette- Try a limited palette. Experiment with temperature and hue

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Try different pastels- Work with hard instead of soft or soft pastels instead of hard. Try pastel pencils.

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Change subject matter- If you paint plein air, try a still life or a portrait. Try Abstract.

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Experiment with underpainting- Try a wet underpainting with water or denatured alcohol.

One artist in our society underpaints with splashes of ink.

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Tomales Bay, Evening by Ian Roberts

You Share Who You Are: A Conversation with Ian Roberts 24

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

Ian Roberts You Share Who You Are: A Conversation with Ian Roberts

By Pamela Comfort Images by Ian Roberts © All Rights Reserved

In March of 2021, after watching some of his videos and reading his book Mastering Composition, I sent Ian Roberts a fan letter. It’s not something I’d ever done before, but I found his clear explanations about composition and design to be the most helpful I’d encountered. Beyond that, as I said in my email, his “... warmth and genuine desire to help others grow in skill and creativity ...” came through in everything he did. Little did I know that almost three years later, I’d have the opportunity to interview Ian. Unsurprisingly, I found him to be every bit as thoughtful and engaging as he seems to be in his writing and videos.

Pam: We know from your bio that your father was an accomplished artist and that you had the wonderful opportunity to begin your own artistic journey alongside him at the young age of 11. How did this early exposure influence your development?

Ian: Right. He had friends that were artists, and I was allowed to come along, and they humored me, I suppose. The thing that I always say about that experience is that they were looking at paintings in terms of design, not in terms of subject. So, for example, we would go down each year to Cape Ann in Massachusetts, and we would be painting the boats and harbors.

After painting, we would be looking at the paintings. I remember walking around with my dad going from person to person. There were maybe three or four of them. And the thing they always talked about was, “I love the way you’ve got that great big dark shape on the left, pulling us over here and that hint of yellow over there …” They PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts It was clear that the subject matter was less important than the design.

Evening at the Chateau by Ian Roberts

were not saying, “I like the seagulls or the buildings or the boats.” They never talked about the subject, they were always talking about the structural design behind it. So, that was my experience at the most formative moment in my painting career, seeing that it was all based on composition. And I think it was formative. I mean, that I ended up writing a book on mastering composition and that it just held my attention, made me realize, that if you go to the bookstore you’ll see the section for watercolor, and you’ll see the section for pastel, you’ll see a section for oil painting, and you’ll see the section for figure drawing and for landscape.

You will not find a section for composition, but it underlies every single painting that anyone ever does. I latched on to that probably because of that experience at 11 and 12 years old, thinking, “Oh, that’s the way they look at it.” I don’t know, maybe if I’d gone out with enough other artists and they had been talking about “the lovely texture on the side of your building there,” but these guys were professional painters, so it really was fantastic.

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Another thing that was interesting about that experience is that my dad took me along, but he was very critical. So he took me there, but he was always kind of pointing out and grumbling about what wasn’t right with my painting. I remember one time that there was a painting friend of his with us, and my dad was going on about all of these errors he was seeing in a painting. His friend took the end of a brush and pointed at the painting saying, “But Art (my dad’s name was Arthur), look at that …” and he pointed at a row of four or five dots that were right in perspective for a dock in the painting going down toward the water. He was trying to say, “okay, there may be problems here, but it’s not just an endless series of problems the way you are pointing out. Look at that.” My dad was completely quiet. He couldn’t quite bring himself to acknowledge that. I share this because I know what it feels like to have your work criticized, and when I started teaching, I said to myself, “ I’m never going to do that to anybody.” I mean, I’m certainly going to point out problems, but it’s going to be embraced in a way that is encouraging. I learned from experience that it’s a painful thing to be criticized in that way.

The third thing I learned from having that experience of being around artists growing up, is that I remember when I was in about my second year of art college, I went to talk to the guidance counselor about something. I can’t even remember exactly what it was, and I remember

Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts her saying, “Well, you have to figure out something.

You can’t earn a living as an artist,” and my reaction was, “Say, what? All of my dad’s friends are earning livings as artists!” I was so disappointed in the message she was sending. One time I bumped into one of my art instructors about eight years after I graduated, and we were talking and I said “I’m painting,” and he said, “Man, oh man, that’s amazing,” sort of implying that everybody finishes art school, but not many actually continue. Not because they don’t want to, but I’ve been really lucky.

Pam: So there you are a youngster along with these professional painters and soaking in all of this wonderful experience. How did that exposure influence your inner journey as an artist?

Ian: I remember I went to this school when I was 9 years old, and I had done a couple of oil paintings.

My dad had boxes of oil paintings, because he was an oil painter back then. An art teacher walked into class and said he wanted to start this thing called “special art,” and it would include oil painting, and I was just like (with childlike enthusiasm) “Oil painting!” I mean, it was like “Ice cream!” From the time I was young, I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. All through my teenage years when there was a lot of stuff going on both in my family and in the world, if I wasn’t painting I was always drawing.

I always knew I was going to be an artist. Spending that time with my dad painting sort of set the thing in motion so that I just knew it. It was never a question.

Coming into Priceville by Ian Roberts

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

Pam: Did you work in illustration or graphic arts or something like that before you focused solely on your fine art?

Ian: In Art College, the first two years I did graphic design. I thought I might become a graphic designer, so I did that for two years and realized, this is not “it.” So, other than some jobs during college, I never practiced graphic design, except that I’ve always used it. There are certain principles that I learned how to use, like type and scale and all those different things. So it was fantastic in a way because it helps you with painting, which is about design. It’s not about how to get the highlight on an apple. I’ve had graphic designers as students and they have a way of seeing design and structure first and not just getting bogged down into the additive thing of adding highlights and details. Sometimes we think that all these little pieces will add up to a painting but they don’t. They just add up to a bunch of parts, and the structure underneath it is the holistic piece that is holding the painting Fall Grasses by Ian Roberts

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together. It’s what draws you in from the other side of the room.

Pam: I’ve read that your painting process has been influenced by Tom Darro, Dan Pinkham, Mark Daily and Dan McCaw. Who would you say most influenced the ideas in your book, Creative Authenticity?

Ian: So, that’s an interesting experience. I was talking with a book marketing guy at one time, about something else entirely, and he asked me if I had any other books and I said I had this one called Creative Authenticity. He looked up some information and he said, “Holy smokes!

You don’t promote this book? You don’t do any marketing?” He was looking at a bunch of numbers on his computer. I said, no I hadn’t ever done any marketing for it. He said, “That’s the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen!” I sold over 20,000 copies of that book, and it’s all word of mouth. I wasn’t advertising it.

I’ll tell you how it happened. I was living in a small town in Iowa, and I spoke to an intuitive, not a psychic. I am making a distinction there.

An intuitive, I feel is helping you feel the thing that you are as opposed to a psychic which maybe is looking at guides or angels. And she said, “You know there are a lot of people in this town that are confused about creativity. You should write a book about creativity.” I said, “Me? I don’t think I’m very creative.” She gave me this look like, are you the dumbest person I’ve ever seen in my life? Intuitively, she just recognized there’s a lot of

Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts creativity there, but I was thinking, yeah, I’m doing these plein air paintings. They’re not that creative really.

Anyway, that’s the way I was looking at myself, and she was saying there was something else there.

So, I booked a full page ad in a monthly magazine saying that I was going to give a lecture at the library for free, and it’s not leading to courses, and it’s not leading to seminars, and it’s not leading to anything else. I’m just giving a free lecture. Then a week before I put it in a weekly newspaper and then realized I better get this thing together. I had been writing notes all month, and I just put it into a series of points. I didn’t even know if anybody would come. I didn’t know if anyone had even seen the ad. I had no idea. It was standing room only! It was packed.

And I just talked about my points. People came up afterward saying it was so great. I was teaching workshops, and I guess I gave the talk about three more times. Then I realized I should write this down and put it in a book. I’m tired of giving this talk. I wrote the whole thing in two ten-day stretches. I almost don’t know where it came from. I mean, I understand where the ideas came from and I understand from experience why I introduced them. But I’ve written other books and it’s somewhat painful and hard, and rewriting, and everything. That thing just came out. It was a gift.

So I had help, I had inspiration from some place.

Morning at the Market, by Ian Roberts

Pam: That’s amazing. And then, how did you get inspired to start teaching?

year there with my stepmother to make sure she was okay. I’d been living in the city, and I moved to the farm. I loved being on the farm, but I realized I needed to do something to make some money.

So, I was at a party, and a woman asked me if I taught and if I’d teach kids. I said, “Oh, I don’t know, if somebody got a dozen kids together I’d teach them, sure.” She called me the next day and said, “I got twelve kids, let’s start!” As it turned out, I didn’t really like teaching kids. But I realized that teaching could work as a way to make money. So, I put up posters around town and geared it toward adults. I got about 20 adults for a course about 10 weeks long. Then a friend of mine had this place in Provence, and we had talked about my doing workshops there. So, I asked my 20 students, “Who wants to go to Provence?” and there were ten hands. I took a dozen people to Provence, and then I did it for 25 years! I never looked back. I never canceled a workshop, and that business just worked. He was fantastic. It was such a wonderful place to share with people year after year.

Ian: Well, it was pretty practical. We had a 100acre farm north of Toronto, and my dad passed away, and before he died he asked me to spend a

Then in 2019, I decided to teach online courses.

I contacted some people that had just finished a workshop in Provence and asked if I could pilot a PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

course with them. I said I’d charge them 60 bucks, and we’d figure it out and they could help me structure it. They agreed. So we structured it that summer, I wrote all the marketing material over the winter, and we launched it in April 2020. It was a month after COVID hit. Everybody was ready for something. I had 800 students two years ago and 750 students last year. It’s a fantastic year-long course, structured in three parts that runs from January to November.

Pam: I did take one of your courses and it was fabulous material. I also got so much from the weekly videos sent right to my email every Tuesday for free! I really looked forward to those week after week.

Ian: Well now it’s monthly. I ran out of steam on doing it weekly. I did 140 of those in the first two years and the first 100 or so were weekly.

Pam: What is the biggest challenge you have overcome as an artist?

Ian: I’d say it’s ongoing. It’s that teaching sort of holds you within the boundaries of what you are teaching. For 25 years, I was teaching plein air painting, and you can only move away from that Last Light on Caromb, by Ian Roberts

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so far if you know the next time you teach you are going to have to do demonstrations, and your chops are going to have to be up for that.

I’m sort of thinking about how I can change that.

I heard someone say the other day, “Be you.

They’ll adjust.” So, I’m thinking alright. I might lose this group, but maybe some other people will come in, and maybe I’ll stop altogether for a while. I’m doing paintings now, but they’re for a very specific function for YouTube, and I’m not doing something wildly experimental or pushing into a new arena of exploration because the number one thing is that painting has got to work.

If it doesn’t work then I have to do it again, and I don’t have time for that. There’s nothing worse than having a demo fail in front of people. Rather than 12 people (as in an in-person workshop) the idea that I’m doing a demo and there’s going to be 35 or 40 thousand people watching the YouTube video… I just can’t do it. I have to do everything within my wheelhouse. And like anyone else, my artistic growth is the reason I do it. Nobody ever gets to the end of the road. There are always more things you want to discover and I am ready to just start doing that.

Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

Pam: You have said, “Our artistic growth is an evolution just as our personal growth is,” and “Authentic creative expression can be a tool for growth.” In what ways do you think that our attention to our creative process helps us to learn more about ourselves in general?

Ian: There’s a lovely quote by the late poet Mary Oliver where she says “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

It’s such a rich idea to me because your artistic life has got entirely to do with your specific attention to the world, and each one of us sees the world differently, and we want to hear from you. We don’t want to hear from you couching your thing within a certain genre or framework so that it’s safe. We want to hear precisely from you.

I used to play tennis, and it was so funny watching both my own psychology and that of others I played against. I noticed that what goes on in your mind when you play tennis is a microcosm of your psychology in the way you treat yourself.

Art is very much the same. People are very hard on themselves when they paint. We’re so engaged in our self-talk and our self-criticism. One of the things Dan McCaw always said is “We’re never aware of our own genius.” We can be so good at a particular thing that we don’t even see it. All we see is the parts that don’t work. Our self-talk when we are painting is really a microcosm of the way we treat ourselves - with everything. So it can help us see that, because it’s kind of present in terms of our reaction to our work. It’s also a vehicle of attention to get over it.

Of course, we’re always going to be critical of our

Morning with the Mistral by Ian Roberts

work and we are always going to be resistant.

It’s the nature of the beast. We are all fearful of what we’re trying to create and whether we can do it and whether it’s any good and all that stuff.

Everybody deals with it, and you never get over it. I’m still dealing with it. I find ways of dealing with the resistance faster, what I call in Creative Authenticity “the dance of avoidance.” We can set up all these mechanisms to avoid working, and they are strategies to not have to see the failure of making this art and not having it work. And yet you learn to work with your strategies and bypass them more quickly each time. I can still feel them when I walk into the studio, but they’re like really tired old tricks. and they don’t really trip me up anymore. They’re still there, and they don’t go away. And to the point of moving into a new direction, they’ll come back. The more you push into arenas that you don’t know, the more they are going to flare up and present their ugly heads.

The idea of somebody thinking they’re not creative PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

The Poet by Ian Roberts

is so interesting in a way because of what’s going on inside our brain. We are translating this vast soup of information, with each one of our senses structuring something that allows us to tangibly exist in a three-dimensional world here that we call physical – although there’s nothing here that’s physical, right? It’s all just an illusion. Our senses manufacture this thing that we call “real” because otherwise we couldn’t live here. We couldn’t otherwise function, so it’s incredibly useful but also very limiting. It’s enticing, this idea of how creative our brain function is and how we are limiting everything, and then you get these insights, “Oh, look at that, oh, look at this,” that open you to this inspiration that’s something more than the tired look of the world that we have. You know it’s jaded, and it’s a shame because the whole thing is this marvelous miracle of fabulousness. I think the artist’s work is helping others see that, and that 32

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you’re open enough to what this whole experience is, seeing these little cracks into something, that like the Leonard Cohen song says will “let the light come in.” You’re painting the light, literally in the sense of making light colors against dark colors to create a landscape, but you are also painting the light of your inspiration – and sharing it.

We wonder whether we are creative or not, and that reminds me of a radio show I heard about from years ago. Each week they would throw a dart at a map of the US and it would land on a little town or a city and then they would take the phone book, point to a person in the phone book at random, and then they would interview that person. Every week it was fascinating. The interviewer must have been great, but the idea being that everybody’s got a story. And your painting is your story. That’s your narrative. It’s the

Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts language of paint, it’s not the language of words, and you need to learn a certain number of skills so that the language is communicable because like a small child, you can create things and not have enough conventional understanding so that the next person understands what the heck you did. Maybe it doesn’t look like anything. But if you get a certain degree of skills that you can then bring to bear to your language of paint, then you’re starting to share like that person chosen by the dart. You share who you are.

Pam: I love that. What a brilliant idea for a show.

So, have you worked in other mediums? What is it about working in oil that you find particularly satisfying?

Ian: It’s like I said about when I was nine years old and the teacher came in and mentioned oil paint. (With childlike excitement) “Oil paint?!!” I also really feel an affinity for pencil. I read a quote

by Andrew Wyeth, and it just made sense to me

about the role of the pencil in terms of giving expression to what you’re saying. “I love the quality of pencil. It helps me to get to the core of a thing.”

I just find it like an extension of what I’m thinking, what I can make the pencil do. I like the viscosity of oil paint. Acrylic sort of hits flat a little bit in the way it dries unless you’re putting some impasto medium with it. I’ve only done pastel when I was teaching workshops to make changes because sometimes the smallest change can make such a dramatic difference. I like pastel because it’s drawing, really. I do demos in my courses with watercolor, but a real watercolorist would say I don’t know what I’m doing.

Pam: What is the best advice you have ever received?

Ian: I studied with an Indian meditation teacher in my twenties. I spent most of my 20s in long meditation courses and teaching meditation.

And I remember one time wanting something

Em and Me by Ian Roberts

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Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

really badly and aspiring to it, and I asked him about it, and he said “Don’t always go for 100% fulfillment … 60, 70, 80 percent is okay.” On the one hand, I thought he was talking about 100% of life, so I didn’t understand. But what he was really saying is another way of saying “the grass is always greener…” So, it’s like wanting to be a rock star and then having to deal with the fame, wanting to be in this great gallery and having a solo show, and then just eating yourself alive by thinking your paintings aren’t good enough to be in the show and you’re actually not enjoying yourself. You’re miserable. Just because it’s an aspiration doesn’t mean one hundred percent is always where it should be. I think I had a tendency to be dissatisfied and I began recognizing that around 60, 70, 80% is maybe the sweet spot of accomplishment. Past that, there’s other stuff happening that actually has side effects and kick back that maybe you don’t want.

Pam: What question do you wish people would ask you?

Ian: I teach these online courses, and there are people coming to the course and they’re nervous about exposing themselves to whatever … themselves, really. “Maybe I can’t paint, maybe I am creative, maybe I’m not.”

So, I create a lesson, and as an educator you know that we learn when we’re stretched, when we are pushed 10 or 15% beyond our comfort zone. So when I structure the courses, I structure them to make sure that people are being stretched every single week. There’s no way that we are just sitting around for three weeks doing what we did last week. We are pushing in. People have different responses to that. Some people just say “okay I’ll see how it goes.” A lot of people feel a sense that “this is more than I know how to do, I have questions.” They have this wall of confusion that they present to themselves, and they feel that the only way they can get out of this wall of confusion is to start asking questions. What I’ve learned is that we should just forget the questions, it’s just busy mind work. There’s

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a very simple solution: pick up the brush or the pencil, put the paper down, and get started with mark number one. Just get to it, because you learn all this stuff through experience. You can present certain ideas, we’ll call it knowledge or intellectual understanding. But you can only learn art through the experience of doing it. It’s like thinking you’re going to learn piano through intellectual understanding, which is ridiculous. It only works because of your actual experience with the process. And that’s what scares people. And that’s what presents these questions. And the questions are useless. It’s not to say that no student ever has a valid question, I’m not saying that. But I’m turning your question around and talking about that wall of confusion that starts formulating questions, to convince us that we need to know the answers to these questions before we can start. Of course, that’s not the way it will ever work because you’ll never understand and get over the confusion until you get down to experiencing the process itself.

For better or for worse.

Pam: In a similar vein, Marla Baggetta, who I interviewed recently, reminds her students of what she calls “PPP.” Perfection leads to Procrastination leads to Paralysis.

Ian: Yes, it’s very true about perfectionism. It’s like that 80/20 rule, where if you get down the right pieces, it will carry the whole work. The thought that it needs to be 100% is just not true. I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you’re getting something kind of fresh, and it’s right there, and you think, “I just need to get this one more…

Ughhh!” and you’ve overworked it. You didn’t trust the freshness. Yeah, sure there are still some things wrong, but as you fix those things you lose the freshness and you overwork it. It’s such a common experience. We all have it.

Pam: Yep, I just did that yesterday! Grrr. So, looking over your life and career, what advice would you give your 20 year old self?

Ian: Just relax. You’ll figure it out. Some things will work out better than you thought and some things won’t work out as well as you hoped, but in the end it’ll all work out. So, just relax.

Our Featured Artist: Ian Roberts

Canal Road by Ian Roberts

Ian Roberts has painted for over 40 years. He shows in galleries in the U.S. and Canada. For over twenty-five years he taught landscape painting in Provence, France each spring, through his school Atelier Saint-Luc, named after the patron saint of painters. He has made several videos on painting and written two books — Creative Authenticity: 16 Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision and Mastering Composition: Techniques and Principles to Dramatically Improve Your Paintings, which has sold over 50,000 copies. He posts a monthly YouTube video (Ian Roberts - Mastering Composition) to his 180,000 subscribers and teaches a series of online courses on Mastering Composition. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Anne Ward, also a painter.

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Meet the Members

Meet the Members Meet a few of the new members of 2023

by Sabrina Hill

Periodically, we chose a random sampling of members to introduce to our readership. It’s always interesting to see what has sparked an artist to engage their artist-soul and to see what inspired them to create.

hesitate to jump in until they are adults. Almost all of these creative people have struggled with insecurities about their abilities − a common thread in artist interviews.

Some come to the process in childhood, “I always knew I was an artist.” Others feel the pull of creativity but

So, here is your invitation to get to know the five artists interviewed for this issue. Despite the obvious differences, you will find they are brothers and sisters in our big art family!

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Meet the Members: Suzanne Burnell

Suzanne Burnell PSWC Member since June 2023

and connected to my art practice. With plein air painting, I enjoy the intense focus because time is so precious. You only have a few hours before the light conditions change. I like the time pressure of knowing I must commit to my mark making and my decisions. There really isn’t time to second guess yourself.

When I’m not painting outside, I take a lot of photos, so that during the rainy or snowy winter months, I can keep painting indoors. I usually try to paint every other day, even if it’s just a small sketch.

Suzanne Burnell paints both landscapes (en plein air) and still lifes. Her work is dynamic and full of life. She took time from her schedule to write for this interview, even though she just recently moved to Colorado!

When did you first become interested in making art?

I have loved making art as long as I can remember.

When I was five, my Kindergarten teacher stopped by our house with art supplies because she thought I had talent. But, of course, like many folks, although I took art classes in school, and loved sketching, I was encouraged to seek a career that didn’t involve art.

What is on your easel right now?

I moved from Washington to Colorado two weeks ago. So, I don’t have my studio set up yet. But this isn’t too much of a worry, because Colorado has more sunny days by far than Washington. So, I’m looking forward to continuing my plein air efforts for a while yet before the snow flies.

For more information, please visit https://www.suzanneburnell.com

What made you try pastels?

After years as a Water Resources Specialist, I’ve now been able to turn my attention back to art. In 2007, I started taking art classes in watercolor. But when an instructor brought in pastels to try, and I took that first swipe of the stick across the page, that was it for me. Such color. Such immediacy. Such fun!

Where do you find inspiration? Do you have any daily or weekly painting practice?

I love to paint plein air. It’s where I feel most focused 38

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Trails End by Suzanne Burnell

Meet the Member: Suzanne Burnell

The View by Suzanne Burnell

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Meet the Members: Julie Ford

Julie Ford

PSWC Member since June 2023

YouTube videos and began to watch tutorials. I watched different artists and styles, and before long I invested in some high quality pastels. Once I discovered the difference that good quality pastels and paper made, I was hooked.

Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration in nature mostly, water, light and color. I definitely have a thing about boats, reflections and beautiful landscapes. I particularly like to capture images that lift the spirit. If I can evoke in people the feeling that captivated me when I saw the subject then I am happy. To me, painting is all about sharing the joy. The joy of creating, playing with color and spending time with your own inner artist.

Do you have any daily or weekly painting practice?

Julie Ford hails from Great Britain where she paints, teaches workshops, and works as an Associate Artist for Unison Colour (Pastels).

When did you first become interested in making art?

What made you try pastels?

I loved art at school but I turned down a place at art college because I didn’t have enough vision to see what I could potentially do with an art degree and I didn’t want to teach. In the 1970’s, there weren’t graphic design jobs or digital roles like we have now. Since taking up art again, I have discovered that teaching is one of my favorite things to do, and I love introducing people to their own inner artist through pastels.

What made you try pastels?

I found a box of pastels in my old art materials in the loft and just tried them out. I was surprised at how easy they were to use and what I managed to produce first time I tried. I then looked up some 40

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I am not one of those people who have a regular routine, and I work best under pressure so I like to have a goal to work towards such as an exhibition.

I like to attend workshops with other artists a lot because you never stop learning, and I find that having that dedicated time means that I produce several pieces of work in one go. I also find that running workshops inspires me to create my own stuff.

What is on your easel right now?

I have been prepping for my winter, online paint a longs, several of which are of snow, so at the moment I have just completed this Winter Wonderland painting. It’s amazing the number of colors your can use for snow before even considering white. I particularly enjoy taking monochrome reference photos and making them colorful like the Winter Wonderland one here.

For more information, please visit www.juliefordart.com

Meet the Members: Julie Ford

Winter Wonderland by Julie Ford

Winter Wonderland by Julie Ford

Above: On the Easel Left & Right: Samples of work by Julie Ford

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Meet the Members: Jim Kallenbach

Jim Kallenbach PSWC Member since June 2023

consulted with advertising agencies to formulate displays for retail stores.

What made you try pastels?

In college I painted mostly in oils, and later in life, I discovered that pastels were my answer to quickly lay down color when doing thumb nails for a composition.

Where do you find inspiration? Do you have any daily or weekly painting practice?

Jim Kallenbach has an infectious enthusiasm for his work, which is evident in his beautiful pieces. From abstracts to more impressionistic styles, his art feels joyous!

When did you first become interested in making art?

In the early 50’s black and white TV came into our home. A kid’s TV show (Draw Along with Jon Gnagy) was my first inspiration for drawing. Jon Gnagy’s simple little landscape with the road going into the distance fascinated me.

Numerous childhood visits to the Nelson Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City, Missouri and exposure to great public local artist works by Thomas Hart Benton reinforced my desire to create. So, chasing that artistic dream led me to Columbia College where I received a BFA as well as a curriculum of studies at the Art Students League Of New York and several months in Europe studying the great masters.

After my formal education I spent 28 years working in a commercial screen-printing company where I 42

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Inspiration comes to me in various ways. Number one is my mind which seems to never shut down.

The trouble I get into is that these ideas speed in so fast that I don’t have enough time to capture them in thumb nail sketches before they travel on. With this endless flow problem, I have learned not to worry about what was lost. So, I get up at about three in the morning, turn on music and draw thumb nail sketches of wherever my mind takes me for about two hours. The supporting actor for inspiration is the visual world which I find very chaotic but wonderful and from which I try to create harmony. My work evolves from my drawings, and I am thankful and excited to take this journey every day where I attempt to convey to others how I see my world.

What is on your easel right now?

I have just started a series of aerial earth view compositions that I am very excited about. This theme of looking down at the earth, discovering all its abstract patterns has always piqued my interest.

Being a treasure chest of possibilities, I will be seeing where it takes me.

For more information, please visit…..https://www.jwkstudios.com/

Meet the Members: Jim Kallenbach

Golden Gate Study

by Jim Kallenbach

“Whatever” Abstract

by Jim Kallenbach

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Meet the Members: John Sherry

John Sherry

PSWC Member since June 2023

worry about running out of time. This might sound morbid, but I didn’t want to be on my deathbed saying, “I wonder if I could have been an artist!” So, I decided rather recently that I need to make the time, fully commit and give it a real effort. It is now my burning passion and has opened a whole new exciting world to me.

What made you try pastels?

I took a class in watercolor and liked it but I had seen the pastel art of Marla Baggetta at an art show and that really stuck with me. The luminosity and vibrancy of the colors stunned me. The fact that she offered online lessons (and made it look so easy) was the reason that I bought my first sets of pastels.

I still watch Marla paint and have taken some workshops with other pastel artists, both in person and online such as Tony Allain and Alain Picard.

John Sherry came to art as an adult, but grew up with artistic parents. As you can see, the art is in his DNA. His painting, The Lookout, won BEST OF SHOW in the 2023 International Association of Pastel Societies 43rd Open Division!

When did you first become interested in making art?

What made you try pastels?

I have always, my whole life, wondered if I could make art. The curiosity has always been there. My mother was an accomplished artist and I think I got some creativity in my genes from her. But I did not take the path of an artist. I’ve expressed that creativity in other ways than art. I’ve been a woodworker; I’ve written and illustrated a book (how to tie knots); and have started several companies throughout my working life. I think entrepreneurs have characteristics in common with artists − certainly both create something from nothing! I told myself making art would be something I’d try when I retire.

As the years rolled by (I’m still working), I began to 44

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Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration in odd places, much of it urban in nature. For example, I am compelled to take countless photo references of freight trains and have painted many. Common everyday items make up many of my still life paintings; vehicles, birds, bottles, coffee cups, etc. I took a picture of a dumpster in the rain the other day! I enjoy trying to make mundane items compelling through art. I look for interesting compositions of shapes and values. I also follow many artists on Instagram and am continually inspired by their beautiful work.

Do you have any daily or weekly painting practice?

The simple answer is that I do not adhere to any regular painting practice schedule. Making art continues to compete for my time with my work and other pursuits (fly fishing and golf). Once a painting is underway though, I lose track of time and other commitments fall by the wayside! Time stands still when I paint.

Meet the Members: John Sherry

What is on your easel right now?

I am currently working on a railroad theme still life. I think it just turned the corner from being horrible to might be OK. Hopefully, it will finish out as awesome!

That’s the way they go, and I never know until the end. I am learning from every painting and my style is evolving. Right now I seem to be experimenting with a cross between impressionism and realism. I

call it rugged realism! I like it, but I don’t know if I will stay with it. I do want impressionistic landscapes to figure more prominently in my future paintings.

Right after I do one more train, (haha).

For more information, please visit….. www.johnsherryart.com

The Lookout by John Sherry

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Meet the Members: Avon Waters

Avon Waters

PSWC Member since June 2023

stalled. I bought a set of 40 pastels for less than $30 at a hobby shop. I was hooked. I sought out pastel workshops. For me continuing education is important.

I had heard other artists talk about how “immediate” pastels were but never understood they meant — unlike oils, — you just picked up a different color pastel if the color you applied wasn’t just right. Of course, I later learned color mixing with pastels, but learning what immediacy really meant, that made pastel my primary medium. Now oils are what I use when I need a break.

Where do you find inspiration? Do you have any daily or weekly painting practice?

Avon Waters is an accomplished artist and teacher with a passion for nature and painting en plein air.

You can see more of his work online.

When did you first become interested in making art?

What made you try pastels?

My interest in art began when I was maybe four or five years old. My mother was in college studying art, and I worked on everything she did for her classes.

I found in her estate a coil-formed pottery vase I made when I was five years old—64 years ago. She had artist friends visit, and I always drew along with them. Art became part of my life all through school.

I started painting oils in high school and studied oil painting at Indiana University. Until seven years ago, I strictly used oils.

What made you try pastels?

My older sister would use pastels and do portraits while I painted in oils or practiced drawing. After years of oil painting, I needed a break … my progress 46

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I grew up on a farm and hiking to the nearest woods, playing in streams, fishing, and camping — that fostered my love of nature. About 15 years ago, a realization that the landscape genre made me happiest, that then became all I pursued. In 20132014 I joined the A-Painting-A-Day movement and painted mostly en plein air, but now I work MondayFridays in a studio three miles from the house. Eight years ago I bought a 110-year old condemned brick -commercial building in a small town of about 200 (Amboy, Indiana) for almost nothing; restored its interior and that really solidified my work habits.

(The owner offered to sell the building and lot to me for $1 but his wife intervened and it cost $1,000.)

Having a dedicated space away from the house created a greater focus on my art: the temptation to go work in the garden or mow the yard instead of paint disappeared. I think treating art like a job that I go to daily, and painting regardless how I feel that day, is important for me. It also helped that at about this time I retired from my day job. I only wish I pursued art full-time when I graduated college rather than work and make art at night and on weekends all those previous years.

Meet the Members: Avon Waters

What is on your easel right now?

Working in pastels, I try to work in a tonalist manner.

I love exploring what I call tree screens. In my area, the land is very flat, but there are little patches of trees that divide farm fields. Tree Screens are compositionally challenging because sometimes it is a single row of various sized trees in a fence line. The shapes of the negative spaces created by the tree trunks and shapes of them silhouetted against the sky or a wooded area behind them, that fascinates me. I typically paint and draw these screens every week between other long-term projects with other artists and essayists — like the traveling exhibition of “Indiana Waterways: the Art of Conservation,”

that just concluded. The three-year project helped bring awareness to the need to protect, clean and restore our waterways.

The tree screens will continue to be interspersed among my work as the next three-year project to paint glacial lakes begins. Many of these lakes are dying due to runoff pollution, and this project with four other artists and essayists will hopefully bring legislation to find solutions.

For more information, please visit….. www.avonwaters.com Instagram @avonwatersarts Substack: https://avonwaters.substack.com

Aged Poplar Privacy Screen by Avon Waters PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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Membership Matters

Benefits of PSWC and IAPS Membership

by PSWC President, Pamela Comfort

Association of Pastel Societies was founded in 1994 As a member of the Pastel Society of the West Coast, as a non-profit organization representing pastel you are probably familiar with some of the benefits societies worldwide uniting in the common cause available to you through your membership: early to demonstrate the validity and quality of pastel notice about PSWC sponsored workshops with fine art.” The association is dedicated, therefore, to esteemed artist/instructors; ability to participate continually raising awareness and esteem for the in the PSWC Members Only Online Show (MOOS); medium of pastel – something that impacts the a beautiful magazine focused on the needs and sales, exhibition and recognition of pastel fine art interests of our members (including catalogues from in the larger art world and our two highly regarded with the public. exhibitions); access to the dynamic PSWC Facebook IAPS holds a six-day long group; access to Regional convention described as events through our “the biggest pastel party Regional Rep Program; on the planet” every two online quarterly General years in Albuquerque.

Membership meetings with The convention includes free demonstrations by two-day, one-day and well-known artists; quarterly partial day workshops, painting challenges to demonstrations, a inspire a daily practice based reception, a book signing around a theme (with an event, a paint-around, a awards drawing for those Duane Wakeham and Pam Comfort fiesta night with music and dancing, a trade show, who complete the challenge); and access to free an honors banquet, and the always beautiful online We Talk Art interviews with fascinating artists PastelWorld Exhibition. The association offers a and others in the art world, to name a few. limited number of scholarships to the convention for artists who belong to member societies. The What some of you may be less familiar with, are best thing about the convention is the unique the benefits available to you due to the society’s opportunity if offers to mix and mingle with so many membership in the International Association of other artists of all skill levels in a celebratory and Pastel Societies (IAPS). Individual artists are not able shared learning setting. to join IAPS, and may only obtain membership by joining a member society. Why is IAPS membership In addition to the in-person exhibition, there is a important? I’m glad you asked! web show each year, and two web shows during non-convention years. IAPS exhibitions have both As stated on its website, “The International 48

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Membership Matters

Master Circle and Open Divisions and are very competitive. Acceptance into an IAPS exhibition is considered a high honor to even the most esteemed artists. IAPS produces its Globe magazine periodically, with information on the exhibitions and the convention.

Online resources for artists include a video library with tips about framing and shipping, photographing your works, pastel lightfastness and understanding the prospectus. There is also a list of large and small museums that hold pastel works in their permanent collection. The IAPS YouTube channel includes walk-throughs and discussions of works in past shows with the judges, and IAPS President Richard McKinley.

Behind the scenes, IAPS provides resources and support for member societies including forums for society presidents, resource materials, and society scholarships to support special projects that advance the knowledge of pastel to their members and/or spread the appreciation of the pastel medium to the public. Since every pastel society is managed by volunteers, this support can be quite valuable.

Your membership in the PSWC and by extension, IAPS, is designed to provide a variety of support, inspiration and camaraderie. For further information about PSWC programs visit our website at www. pswc.ws

Meeting with friends at IAPS 2022 Pam Comfort makes the rounds with Marla Baggetta, Albert Handell and friends

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Art School

Art School The Golden Ratio

by Francesca Droll

Whether we realize it or not, we constantly look for order and understanding of the world around us, a trait that has helped civilizations advance. This seeking of order and understanding applies to our assessment of visual design as well. Across cultures, we humans spot patterns, this is especially true of spacing, sizing, and proportions.

The term Golden Ratio (aka Golden Section, Golden Mean, Divine Proportion, Phi Ratio), describes how elements within a piece of art can be placed in the most aesthetically pleasing way. However, it is more than a term, it is a ratio between two numbers, 1 and 1.618 and can be found in many pieces of art, architecture, design, and even the human body.

1 : 1.618

The sequence is also commonly seen in nature. The pattern and sequence is found in the branching of trees, flowering artichokes, sunflowers, and arrangement of leaves on a stem, to name a few.

These seemingly random patterns in nature also are considered to have a strong visual value that appeals to humans.

What Are the Benefits of Using the Golden Ratio?

It’s not known exactly why we are so drawn to images with the Golden Ratio, perhaps it’s because it is so present in our world — some believe its familiarity is part of what creates it’s beauty. Studies indicate that we prefer images that align with the Golden Ratio and that even tiny changes bringing an image closer to it impact the brain of the viewer.

Duke University professor Adrian Bejan, believes that we interpret images or views faster with the ratio than without it. Our vision evolved to be horizontally oriented because we bring in visual information by “scanning the horizon,” whether we are looking at art or checking across an open plain for predators.

Bejan believes shapes that are true to the Golden Ratio assist our scanning and the transmission of images to the brain.

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WHAT THE GOLDEN RATIO LOOKS LIKE The easiest way to picture the Golden Ratio is by looking at a rectangle with a width of 1 unit and a length of 1.618 units. If you were to draw a line in this plane so that one square and one rectangle resulted, the square’s sides would have a ratio of 1 to 1. And the “leftover” rectangle? It would be exactly proportionate to the original rectangle: 1

to 1.618. You could then draw another line in this smaller rectangle, again leaving a 1-to-1 square and a 1-to-1.618 rectangle. You can keep doing this — the Ratio continues on in a downward pattern regardless. As you can see in the diagram below, continuing with this division creates a spiral as the pattern gets smaller and smaller.

1.618

1.618

1

This is a rectangle that has the ratio of a width of 1 and a length of 1.618. The rectangle is divided with the space to the left of the dotted line creating a square.

The resulting rectangle on the right of the dotted line is the same proportion as the original rectangle: 1 to 1.618.

1

1 1.618

1

1.618

18

1.6

1

Applying the same division as above with the rectangle on the right, just on it’s side now, results in another smaller rectangle.

Again the same proportions of the original rectangle.

1

1.618

Rectangles and squares are the clearest examples, but the Golden Ratio can be applied to any number of geometric forms including circles, pyramids, prisms, polygons,and triangles (as shown above).

1

And once again, applying the same division in the resulting rectangle is—you guessed it—the same proportion as the original.

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1.618

1

Art School

THE RULE-OF-THIRDS vs. GOLDEN RATIO IN ART The way you crop and frame images has a large impact on how the viewer feels about your art, even if they aren’t aware of it.

The Rule-of-Thirds:

The Golden Ratio grid:

Two sets of equally spaced parallel lines running perpendicular to each other. The result is nine equal-sized boxes across the canvas or layout and four intersecting points. In most cases, these points are the “sweet spots” where it is best to place subjects of focus.

Two sets of unequally spaced parallel lines running perpendicular to each other. Divide the dimension of the side by 1.6 to determine how far from the edge to place the line. The Golden Ratio lines are closer to the center than in the Rule-of-Thirds.

Again, intersecting points create “sweet spots.”

Height ÷ 1.6

Pros: • Gives your image equal weight and visual harmony.

Cons:

• May come across as too divided, depending on your subject matter.

• It’s easy to implement due to its symmetry. • The forced symmetry can feel too perfect • There are a lot of and not organic sweet spots to enough. choose from.

Width ÷1.6

Pros:

.Cons:

• The top section of the grid is perfect for landscape pieces.

• The Golden Ratio grid can be harder to create than the Ruleof-Thirds grid..

• The grid divides space on the canvas mathematically.

• It may leave awkward blank spaces in your work if you are not • Works well for images careful. where weight should be toward the frame’s outer edges.

You may ask, if the Golden Ratio is harder to implement than the Rule-of-Thirds grid, why bother? Because the Golden Ratio allows you to work with the sweeping arc of the Golden Ratio spiral. When placing subjects of focus along this curved line, you are drawing your viewers’ eyes to the spiral coil. It’s like a subliminal sign showing them where to look.

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GOLDEN RATIO/GOLDEN MEAN CALIPERS A Golden Ratio caliper is a handy tool to use so that you don’t have to do the mathematical equations for your composition. You can purchase a “Golden Mean” caliper online or you can do what I did and make a caliper using mat board and stationery fasteners.

Gary Meisner, author of The Golden Ratio: The Divine Beauty of Mathematics has posted Golden Ratio Do it Yourself Projects that includes the template I used (shown at right). You will find this at www.goldennumber.net/do-it-yourself. This template can be used at this size for smaller painting or enlarged to a size that would be appropriate for larger paintings.

Follow the size measurements at the top of the sheet since the template is not actual size. Use millimeters for the length of each piece. I cut the width of each piece to be 15 millimeters wide. Again, use the millimeters listed to determine where to punch the holes in each piece. Carefully measure where the holes go, punch holes through both pieces and secure with a gold stationery fastener.

This size caliper will stretch to 24” wide between points F and H.

WITHOUT A CALIPER To figure out the Golden Ratio of a particular paper size without a caliper, divide the lengths of each side of paper by 1.6. For example: let’s use a 9” x 12” sized sheet of paper.

• Divide 9” by 1.6 which gives you 5.625”.

12

5.625”

• Divide 12” by 1.6 which gives you 7.5”.

Measure the length out from each side of your paper as shown above.

Where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect are the four “sweet spots.” These spots are where you want your focus to be. By imaging the spiral coming out of one of the spots, you can lay other elements to lead the spiral in.

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9

7.5”

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THE GOLDEN RATIO APPLIED TO MY OWN WORK Here is an example of a recent painting where I placed the focal point of the heron in a Golden Ratio sweet spot. The calipers measure the space available by placing each point at the edges of the paper on parallel sides. The middle arrow points to the Golden Ratio sweet spot.

This is a plein air piece painted recently. What drew me to the scene was the vibrant blue reflection of the sky in juxtaposition to the lotus leaves. I knew to place the most prominent lotus blossom in a Golden Ratio sweet spot. I just approximated the location and was surprised to see how close I was when I got home and used my calipers. Practice definitely results in progress!

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I was also surprised to see that other blossoms had a relationship from a side of the paper and another blossom.

There was one blossom that bugged me and I struggled where to put it while I was painting onsite. It was one of the last elements that I added to the composition and I knew I didn’t have it quite right. When I got home I used the calipers...

Where the two imaginary lines intesected from the middle points of the calipers is where I moved the blossom to.

Here is the before and after (see next page) — what do you think? To me, moving the blossom creates stepping stones from the lower left blossom to the upper central blossom. The silhouette of the repositioned blossom is also more noticeable on the lighter lotus pads behind it.

Experimenting with the Golden Ratio in your own work will take some practice. You can make it as simple or complex as you want it to be. There are several Golden Ratio Calculator apps available but I haven’t experimented with any of them yet.

Using the calipers will make it easier for you to place elements and bring clarity and interest to your composition.

Before

RESOURCES:

www.artignition.com/golden-ratio-in-art, www.goldennumber.net/do-it-yourself, www.arts2art.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ golden-ratio-examples.jpg

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Art Workshops

Art Workshop Vianna Szabo Expressive Portraits with Vianna Szabo, PSA, IAPS-EP January 13-14, 2024 $210

Daily Schedule Start time 12noon EST End Time 7pm.

1 hour break 3-4 pm EST Using expressive color, Vianna interprets the world around her to tell a visual story. Whether she is working in pastel, oil or watercolor she’s inspired to capture a moment by painting light and atmosphere to express emotion. Vianna believes painting is a journey of creative study and encourages her students to learn the fundamentals so they express their own artistic voice.

Vianna will be using my MacBook Pro and IPad to teach and film the class. Students will be able to send her their images and she can critique them using Procreate and send the critique back to the student in the form of a jpeg and time lapse.

Vianna is a popular and passionate instructor and teaches workshops nationally and abroad. She has a BS in Education from Eastern Michigan University but credits her art education to 58

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books, long hours at the easel, and the generosity of talented friends. Vianna is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America and has achieved Distinguished Pastellist status in the Pastel Society of the West Coast. She was inducted into the International Association of Pastel Societies Master Circle in 2011 and achieved Eminent Pastelist status in 2015 and earned signature member status in the Michigan Watercolor Society in 2020 and signature membership in the Great Lakes Pastel Society in 2022.

Websites: www.viannaszabo.com www.patreon.com/viannaszabo Vianna Szabo YouTube

Art Workshops

Art Workshop Rita Kirkman “Layering the Light” A 3-day virtual workshop with Rita Kirkman, PSA-MP, CPS, IAPS-MP February 23-25, 2024 $285

Daily Schedule 3 hours morning / 3 hours afternoon 2 hour lunch (to relieve any strain from sitting or computer use)

9am-5pm Pacific Time (8am to 4pm if class prefers)

In this virtual 3-day workshop, you will learn how to create a vibrant sense of glowing light in your pastel paintings. Instruction emphasizes value and temperature as keys to unlocking the light. Learn an underpainting method to “nail the values!” The workshop is appropriate for adventurous beginners all the way to advanced pastelists.

This workshop is not subject specific. Students may work from their own photos, and Rita will supply some of her own to share. Demos will be mostly animals, in addition to one or more landscapes.

Rita Kirkman was born an artist. She has been using pastel since she was 11 years old and had her first paid portrait commission at 17. Since 2003,

Kirkman has improved her own style and technique with pastel through independent study and workshops with renowned artists each year. This effort has been consistently rewarded with major awards in national and international competitions.

Her work has been featured in the Pastel Journal and the Pratique des Arts Spécial Pastel, and published in many others. She is a Pastel Society of America Master Pastelist and an Eminent Pastelist with the International Association of Pastel Societies. Her portraits and paintings are in private collections all over the world, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, Africa and Australia.

https://rita-kirkman.pixels.com/

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Art Workshop Nancie King Mertz “Puzzled by Perspective?”

A 3-day virtual workshop with Nancie King Mertz, IAPS Master & Eminent Pastelist March 21-23, 2024 $360

In this workshop Nancie intends to help artists understand 1 & 2 point perspective when including man-made structures in their work.

Cityscapes, villages and rural subjects will be provided as reference if painters do not have their own photos. An hour and a half demo will start each morning, with questions encouraged along the way. Artists will paint until 3-3:30 with frequent progress photos emailed to me for assistance. Near the end of each session, the work will be shared with the class for group critique.

This workshop is appropriate for Beginners with some pastel experience, as well as Intermediate and Advanced pastelists.

Nancie King Mertz, has spent her lifetime painting in oil & pastel. She was awarded the Master Circle by International Association of Pastel Societies, Eminent Pastelist in 2018, and is a Master Signature member of Pastel Society of America & Chicago Pastel Painters. Nancie

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juries, demos and teaches numerous workshops across the United States, Italy, France and Croatia.

She is on the faculty for the Plein Air Convention, Plein Air South, and the IAPS Convention.

IAPS awarded her the Prix de Pastel in 2018. She was the lead juror for the 2019 IAPS Masters’ Show, and juried the 2022 Pastel Society of America - Enduring Brilliance Exhibition. Her work has been featured in Plein Air Magazine, Southwest Art, American Artist, French & Chinese magazines, as well as the cover and several articles in Pastel Journal.

Websites: https://www.nanciekingmertz.com/

Art Workshops

Art Workshop Judith Leeds Capturing the person behind the pose with Judith Leeds, PSA, IAPS-MC May 11-12, 2024

So often, portraits, especially those commissioned, are stiff and don’t reflect the personality of the subject.

In my workshop, you will learn how to find the unique qualities of each model, not just of the head but also the whole figure. I’ll instruct you on how to pose and light the model to best reflect their feelings and personality.

Some of the subjects I will cover are pastel techniques, composition, the effects of light on the face and clothing and how to integrate the background with the figure. Each day I will do a demo to illustrate what we will be covering that day.

Judith Kazdym Leeds is a internationally known award winning artist who has created over 3,000 book jackets including the classic book, THE COLOR PURPLE. Her work has appeared in both national and international magazines and has won numerous prestigious awards and medals. She was named by PRINT Magazine, in its 40 year Design Retrospective, as being among the elite group of artists who had created the most innovative designs in the United States over a forty year period.

Judith paints portraits, still-lifes and landscapes in both pastels and oils. Her work has garnered many awards, medals and honors https://www.judithleeds.com/ PSWC Magazine | Winter 2023/2024

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Housekeeping

PSWC HOUSEKEEPING EXHIBITION NEWS The MOOS Show is coming up! The deadline is January 31, 2024. Your 2024 dues must be current to enter. Pastels USA: 99 Voices in Pastel is being held at the Brea Gallery in Brea, California.

The Brea Gallery is a 6,500 square foot contemporary art space that presents four major exhibitions per year. Located in the Brea Civic and Cultural Center, the Gallery has been offering meaningful exhibitions, workshops for all ages, artist lectures, live art demonstrations, a gift shop, and unique artistic opportunities for the community since it opened in 1980.

The Brea Gallery is a community-based arts space, working with upcoming and established artists in a variety of ways.

However, the Gallery does not represent artists, have a permanent collection, or offer art appraisals. Please visit our opportunities page for information on how you can be a part of what we do here.

ALWAYS LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS Members, we need your other talents, too! We have lots of opportunities for volunteers from working on the PASTELS USA Show to hosting paint-outs to working on the Magazine. Please contact Pam Comfort for more information here.

MEMBERSHIP DRIVE One of the best ways to support a healthy society is to bring in new members. There are lots of good reasons to join.

If you have artist-friends who are not members, now’s the time to invite them to join. Contact Karen Jones, if you have questions or would like more information.

WORKSHOPS If you are looking for a workshop to take or are a pastel teacher looking to teach a workshop, contact us! Jean Myers is our workshop coordinator, and she is awesome. We are currently offering in-person and ZOOM classes with some of the best pastel teachers on the planet.

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Housekeeping

NEW MEMBERS - September to December 2023

EXECUTIVE BOARD President/Regional Reps/ Scholarship Pamela Comfort e: pam@pamelacomfort.com Interim Vice President/ Magazine Sabrina Hill e: art@sabrinahill.com Secretary Bonnie Griffith e: bzgriff53@gmail.com Treasurer Deborah Pepin e: deb.treas.pswc@gmail.com

BOARD APPOINTEES Membership Chair Karen Jones e: pswcmembership@gmail.com Pastels USA 99 Voices Co-Chairpersons Francesca Droll e: fd@abacusgraphics.com Peggy Davidson Post e: peggydpost@gmail.com Membership Show (MOOS) Chair Dug Waggoner e: dugwaggoner@att.net Ways & Means Chair Open Workshops Chair Jean Vineyard Myers e: jeanmyers1990@gmail.com Publicity Committee Chair Open

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Website Coordinator Diane Breuer e: diane@dianebreuer.com Membership Status Chair Jan Miller e: halfhalt@saber.net Social Media Coordinator Unfilled Mom’s Hill by Pam Comfort

eBlast Coordinator Cynthia Riordan e: clriordan@gmail.com

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Bobbye West-Thompson’s Paint-out Group painting with pastels en plein air

We. Are. Pastelists.

Join us and find out what it’s all about. www.pswc.ws

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