What are Pastels and Pastel Paintings?

Pastel is the most enduring medium, it does not contain the liquid binder that causes other media, such as oils, to yellow, crack, fade or darken with age. Pastel have proven to retain its vibrant radiance over centuries, providing it is properly framed and kept out of direct sunlight.

The cave paintings of prehistoric man in France and Spain which were painted using earth colors mixed with water are considered the precursors of pastel painting.  Some of these are more than 15,000 years old.

The pastel medium was first mentioned by Leonardo da Vinci in 1495.  Pastels were used in the 16th century and became really popular in the 18th century. Rosalba Carriera (1675 ­ 1758) brought pastels into the limelight with her beautiful portraits created in the late 16th century. Her work hangs today in the Accademia Galleries in Venice.



Other artists followed, the most famous being Degas, Delacroix, Millet, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec and Whistler.

Mary Cassatt introduced the pastel medium to her friends in Philadelphia and Washington and helped popularize it in the USA.  Her delicate portraits of women and children hang in museums all across the country today.

Modern notable artists who have worked extensively in pastels include Fernando Botero, Francesco Clemente, Daniel Greene, Wolf Kahn, and R. B. Kitaj. 

As a landscape artists, my own work has been particularily influenced by the pastel works  and writings of Bill Creevy, Elizabeth Mowery, Albert Handel and Richard McKinley.

The French Impressionist Edgar Degas was the most prolific user of pastel, and its champion. In 1988, Sotheby's sold at auction a Degas pastel for $7,500,000!

Painting the Ozark Landscape With Pastels.

Pastel is a versatile and exciting medium, particularly for the landscape artist and the plein air painter. It lends itself very well to expressing the mood of a landscape and reacts quickly to the artist's thought process. Drawing on paper or board is the most common method of applying pastels.  But through the centuries, a variety of unique "painting" methods (blending, scumbling, layering, dusting) have been developed  to apply pastels that create vibrant colors that no other medium can match. For several years now, I have been developing a variety of original "dusting" techniques that creates a very soft, moody effect. The serendipitious nature of dusting makes each piece I do uniquely original.

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and can not be downloaded, copied or used without written permission.