And it’s time for another roundup of stunning pastel paintings! I love going through the paintings I’ve chosen through the past month or so but ohhhhh sometimes it’s really difficult to choose only ten to talk about. Considering the time it takes me to analyse my choices and then write something clear and articulate about them, I’m glad I do need to winnow down the selection to 10!

Let’s get on then!

Turned slightly to the left, a woman sits looking out at us. She wears a sunflower in her hair, the colour matching that of her yellow sleeveless dress. She holds a blue ball in her lap which echoes, in shape, the circle of beads around her neck. Her afro-like hair is not controlled or tidy but instead leaps from her head. What does contain it is that shape behind her. This semi circle of colourful pattern frames her head. It gives the effect of a god-like headdress the shape of which reminds us of deities and perhaps Egyptian princesses.

The colourful pattern continues lower down on the wall. Two circular shapes are cut out directly behind the woman: they echo the shape of the ball she holds. On the one hand, this circular shape is an element in constructing the painting – it creates a space behind the woman which prevents the pattern from intruding on the solidity and primacy of the figure. On the other hand, as part of the narrative, it creates the impression of a throne. 

The woman – Jaja – sits regally. The blue ball she holds reminds me of the orb held by British monarchs and gives her the status of a queen. She’s a queen who is casual and connected to nature (by the sunflower) and a less urban lifestyle. It also gives her an air of informality that we don’t associate with Royals (at least, not until recently!). She looks out of the painting yet her eyes don’t connect with ours. Confident in her poise, she seems to be deep in her own thoughts and perhaps metaphorical memories of what has been.

The warmth of her skin and dress contrast with the coolness of the mostly blue background. The lightest parts of the painting run through the centre from sunflower down through the dress while her skin creates the middle value. Everything else sits as a dark value. All of which put the focus on the figure.

When I was selecting which paintings to include in this month’s roundup of stunning pastel paintings, this one always stopped me as I scrolled by. Its rich colour and full range of values along with the beauty and poise of this young woman are powerful indeed! You can see more of Wendy Caporale’s work on her website.

And now to a painting of a child. We look down on a mass of golden curls overlapping pale smooth skin. Eyes look away from the viewer as hands play with an apple. The black of the shirt contrasts with the lightness of skin and hair and also the apple, keeping our attention on both. When I first saw this painting, I thought it was done in oils. It has that sense of brushstroke and the play between transparency (especially seen in the background) and opacity, characteristic of oil painting.

The soft edges at the periphery of the child’s hair gives the effect of a halo, inviting the notion of the angelic innocence of childhood. Yet there is much to counteract this implication! First, there’s the apple. In Christianity, the apple represents the loss of innocence and the acquiring of knowledge. Look more closely at the face – there’s a slight tightening of the lips and that sideways glance. Do we sense a wee bit of rebelliousness?  What is going on in the child’s mind? ‘Shall I keep this apple for myself?’ or ‘Will anyone realise I took the apple?’ or ‘I dropped the apple, uh oh.’ There are so many possibilities!

The golden apple is also an element in myth and fairy tales: it represents something valuable to be treasured. Certainly, this suggests the way the painter feels about this child. By association, we the viewer, also begin to have that feeling. Which leads to another apple thought. The shape and colouring of the apple reflects the child’s head. Thus, the apple in the title refers not only to the apple in the painting but also to the child – “the apple of my eye.”

Speaking of eyes, there’s another set of eyes in this painting. Although the child looks away, the cat on the shirt stares out at us. There’s a sort of don’t-you-dare-come-closer look as if the cat acts as a guardian to the child. Yet the colourful spots of red in the ear and nose (echoing the same colouring in the child’s facial features) imply a feeling of playfulness and mischief. Indeed, the edges of the child’s arms are blurred suggesting movement, the constant type of motion and energy so typical of this age. The child wants to be off to play. And in the background, fireflies seem to dash about. (There’s something about the time of day evoked in this painting that reminds me of Sargent’s painting, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose!)

Check out Corey Pitkin’s website for more of his work. 

There’s something fun and slightly wicked about looking into people’s windows. Sometimes we do it at that time of day before the light has gone from the sky but interiors are being lit, the curtains not yet drawn. In these moments, if people are moving within the space, our tendency is to take a quick peek but then quickly look away, not wanting to be caught spying something we shouldn’t. On the other hand, when the night has fully fallen and interiors are exposed for our viewing, we may look a wee bit longer. We may feel uncomfortable and voyeuristic but the opportunity is difficult to resist.

In this painting by Robin Warnes, we look in through the window of a grey stone house. The window has a slight arch and the frame divides the window into four panes. This suggests an older building from a time of years gone by, a time of elegance. But what we catch sight of inside the building is hardly that. So what do we see? 

First there’s colour – the pow! of neon pink surrounded by a lot of red and set off by various greys. I’m drawn to these colours that act as a backdrop to three figures in various awkward positions. A figure stands on the left, facing out, but with eyes blank and unseeing. One arm is raised and holds something green – a ball, a weight? The other arm is stiff at his side, twisted in an odd and unpleasant way. A white overshirt (a lab coat? monitoring the lab rats?) seems to be only partially on. 

Another figure lounges on a dark blue sofa. It’s dressed in a long-sleeved, pale pink outfit, one arm raised behind the head. The eyes are dark and so it’s difficult to tell where it is looking but it appears to gaze outward but in a vacant sort of way. A third figure stands close to the window, eyes downcast. An arm crosses the body as if to start pulling a curtain across and thus block us out. This person is dressed in a shirt with large buttons, almost pyjama-like. Black hair is slicked back and the lips appear rouged.

I have the sense of the artist arranging for us to look in at a scene of inelegance, one filled with genderless and nonchalant figures set within the emotionally charged pinks and reds of the interior. The story possibilities are endless. What’s your interpretation?

I couldn’t find a website for Robin Warnes but here’s one lead.

Sally Strand is a master in the subtle layering of colours that, close in value, create a vibration of surface. For instance, take a look at the freezer and fridge doors, the kitchen floor, and also the woman’s top. The colours Strand uses in the painting relate throughout, from the blues that indicate the refridgerator, to the clothing, to the room beyond, to the red curtain in the upper right balanced by the reddish items in the fridge lower left. This kaleidoscope of colour along with Strand’s signature linear application and accurate drawing create a painting of excitement and satisfaction. 

Sally Strand was one of two artists (Doug Dawson being the other) in whose workshop I really ‘got’ the use and benefit of value studies. In this painting, you can easily see the underlying value structure – squint and you’ll see the most obvious darks as the woman’s hair and her pants. But there’s also the wall behind the fridge and the room beyond. The light values are the area inside the fridge, the light glowing off the woman’s arm and hip, the kitchen floor, and the light coming through the bedroom curtain the shape of which is echoed in what looks like a thermos on the floor.

We have a woman, opening (or closing the fridge). She pauses. Why? Her look towards the bedroom gives us clues. Is there someone in the room, perhaps in the bed (although from what we can see, the bed looks neatly made), or sitting on a chair hidden from our view? Or has she paused for a completely different reason? A thought? A memory? A sound? A forgotten reason for opening the fridge in the first place? 

The fridge and the wall behind it tilt in a vertiginous way. This disturbing angle adds an unsettling layer to the narrative. What else is happening here? The content of the painting itself delights in the tension set up between all those items in the fridge, the turned head that looks to the bedroom with its partially seen bed, the insulated mug on the floor (why is it there?) and the drawn curtains. Add the colour and linear elements to the narrative and you’ve got a painting that keeps you coming back for more!

You can see more of Sally Strand’s work on her website.

We’re in a garden shop where a woman holds plants and a man sits. The woman stands in the background but she’s in the lit part of the painting so our eyes see her first. Then our eyes are attracted to the white calla lilies scattered down below her in the painting. We see the hands clasped and follow the arms up the body to the man’s head which is turned away from us towards the woman. We can make guesses about these two humans and how they are connected, that they may be partners in work (here in the shop) or partners in life, out on a plant hunt. Other possibilities exist of course but these seem the most probable.

The artist deals with the complexity of plants in a greenhouse deftly and loosely. (I’m taking it we’re inside because of the small indications of such – the doorway structure around the woman, and the sense of a metal pole that holds shelves seen on the upper left side of the painting.)  Halstead keeps her pastel strokes loose and almost scribble-y yet manages to describe assorted plant forms, pots, and windows.

Various greens, cool and warm, give us the impression of a luxuriant assemblage of plants to choose from. The only variant of colour comes from the oranges and reds of the pots and of skin colour. All else, including the clothing, sits in the cooler range of blues and greens. Even so, there’s a feeling of warmth in the picture. Some of that, for me, comes from the sense of connection between the two figures. The man’s slumped pose suggests a certain resignation but not an unhappy one. He looks over at the woman who is happily choosing or arranging plants.

What I find fascinating about this painting is the appearance of the man’s face. What is that white on his visage? It’s almost as if he’s been plastered with sunblock. But that doesn’t make sense to me. The man faces away from the light source that illuminates his shoulders and hair so the light colour on his face is not a result of being lit. So what is it?  I like to read it as a mask, the one we all wear to protect us from the world’s judgement about who and what we should be. The woman too seems to be wearing a mask (or of course glasses but to continue the imagery, bear with me!). We wear masks without even thinking about it; we hide who we really are. As we age, we start to remove or slip the mask down once in a while but it takes a lot of self-confidence to expose ourselves fully to the world. 

To see more of Jenny Halstead’s work, click here.

This group of ordinary trees, they refuse to be still. They sway and dance in tandem with each other. They reach out, embrace, entwine each other. The subject of this painting seems to be th relationship between this specific group of trees. The day is hot and the sun beats down, almost bleaching out the sky and grass. There’s shade thrown by the trees but little cool relief is to be found there.

Crittenden lovingly represents these trees in the same way landscape painters like Constable and Corot did before him. There’s a sense of each leaf being depicted although this isn’t the case but there’s that impression. 

Basically we have a dark and light painting. A band of rhythmic dark gambols across the painting (large at 32 1/2 x 44 1/2 in) with light areas framing it both top and bottom. A simple colour scheme of primarily green and yellow, the green is divided between the warm sunlit areas and the cool undersides of the trees, while the pale yellow colours the dry grasses.

If we stop to listen, we can hear the occasional breeze rustle through the grasses and trees, and the quiet swoosh of the branches above as they sway in the movement of air. The sound of crickets erupts suddenly but otherwise, there’s just the sound of the earth breathing. 

The Mediterranean feel invites us to sit in the shade to eat our picnic of bread, cheese, and wine, to hear the laughter of children running about in the distance, to join in the chatter of older folk. And then, it’s time for a siesta.

 The artist saw both the beauty and the visual possibility for a painting. He took what looked ordinary and created something out of the ordinary instead. I couldn’t find a website for James Crittenden. You can, however, have a look here. 

Abstract or landscape? I see a view through craggy white stone cliffs, past deep blue shadows to the lush farmland beyond. And are those red-roofed buildings in the distance? I note how the complexity of the rock formations and layered fields are balanced by the quiet swath of grey sky above it all.

I’m reminded of painters who capture the tunnel views between tall high-rises. And without a doubt, I see connections between this painting and the extreme views by Diebenkorn in his cityscapes views that eventually morphed, over the years, into the Ocean Park series of abstracts. 

Let’s look at the painting again, this time without searching for a representation of something from reality. Instead, let’s see only the shapes of colour – vertical rectangles of creamy whites and blues, horizontal forms of greens and grey blue. The thickness of pastel application in the sky pushes forward, countermanding any illusion of perspective. This sets up a push/pull dynamic between the idea of landscape (a reality) and the pure shapes of colour (abstraction). Look at the way the blackness of the shape atop the right white shape (the cliff) dashes itself across the green shape (field) beyond, thus negating the illusion of perspectival space.

The dark shape of blues and blacks anchor the painting. Keeping these colours and the greatest contrast in value near the bottom of the painting (white rocks against dark shadows) doesn’t prevent our eye from seeking out the warmth of green above (and beyond). 

There’s an edgy abrasive quality to the painting brought on by the rawness of line and vigorous application. Even the colour adds to this affect – greens and blues and creamy whites are punctuated by spots of red and orange. The neutralness of whites and greys create balance and make the saturation of colour in other areas that much more luscious.

Check Malcolm Taylor’s website to see more of his work.

ting, Every time I look at this painting by Martin Goold, I think of needlework, or tapestry. I absolutely believe that if I stretch my fingers out to touch the painting, I will feel the furriness of yarn threaded over the surface. This pastel caught my eye because of yes, the bright saturated colour, and also its unusual and unexpected similarity to a completely different medium. Indeed I am taken with the mix of a traditional form and a contemporary look.

Like the painting before this one, this piece has both a sense of abstraction and reality. Look closely and you see a patchwork of mostly squares filled with lines of various colours. In the upper part of the painting, cool blue lines are placed evenly both vertically and horizontally, while below, warm ones are arranged diagonally. Step back and we see a scene of houses, built closely together under a blue sky. As we come back in to examine the scene more closely, once again we see only the lines of colour that zigzag their way across the painting. 

Looking for the narrative content, the buildings appear to be covered with corrugated zinc type roofing (with the artist taking artistic license with colour!). At first look, there’s an appearance of rigidity and order but look with a discovering eye and we see the ramshackled nature of the arrangement. The title indicates we’re looking at buildings below a European castle. Yet everything about the piece – the bright warm colours, the bold suggestion of metal roofing and siding, buildings piled on top of each other, the barely controlled chaos, the deep blue sky – suggests we are elsewhere, somewhere warmer and less constricted. In the rhythmic lines, I can feel the beat of music that vibrates joyfully throughout the piece and surely I will see dancing around the corner.

You can see more of Martin Goold’s work here. 

This painting uses a similar colour scheme of blues and reds as the previous painting but how different it looks! From the blazing heat of the day, we come to the misty cool of an early evening in the city. Cars head away from us though they then come to a halt at the red traffic lights. Telephone poles and the communication lines that connect them swing overhead. A streetlight hasn’t yet come on. Neon lights illuminate buildings in the next block. If we are quiet and look more carefully, in the distance we can see a lone figure on the sidewalk. We also make out red traffic lights at the next intersection and ahhh, finally noticed, the yellow lights of cars coming towards us. There’s also the faint blur of various colours illuminating the low cloud.

The blueness of the sky indicates that it’s twilight – that delicious time of day when there’s still enough light to see your surroundings (and the sky) yet all the lights of the city are on. Values are kept close together, mostly a dark middle value, adding to the impression of a damp evening. Haloed car lights and shadows within and beneath vehicles mark the extremes of light and dark values. 

There’s a balance between the chaos of downtown and the quiet of a broad sky veiled with thin clouds laden with water. Strangely, in this painting I only sense a hushed silence even though I’m in an urban area. All I can hear is the splash of water as tyres slice over wet asphalt. And patiently, I await the change to green lights.

You can check out more of Janet Hamilton’s work on her website. 

And finally, we come to Catherine Sheppard’s portrait of a Raven. I was instantly captured by that beady eye reflecting back all my own thoughts. In this closely cropped piece, the bird and I sit eye-to-eye. So much is said, with no need for behavioural gestures of legs or wings.

The raven sits with its back to the viewer, slightly hunched. Its feathers are slightly fluffed up perhaps against the cold or following a bath in a nearby puddle. Although we think of ravens (and the Corvus family) as being black, their shiny feathers often reflect the blue of the sky and here, the artist has rendered each feather, with exquisite care, in blues and blacks capturing both the sheen of upper feathers and the softness of insulating ones. 

That curved beak leads us instantly to the eye (as if we need help – that eye is unavoidable!). After pulling away, we are easily led, by the direction of the feathers themselves, diagonally down towards the bottom right. The movement stops as our exit is blocked by the shoulder of a wing but then we find that we are guided upwards by the same diagonal direction of the feathers in their chaotic layering against the edge of the body. And we land in the slightly messy collection of throat feathers so typical of a raven’s physiognomy. After surveying the countenance and character of this bird we can move to the warm smooth background that so perfectly counters (and enhances) the agitation of line and the cool dark blues of the bird.

This raven, creator and trickster in the Pacific Northwest legends and myths, seems to have something to say to us. It watches at us, perhaps questioningly. Set against the complementary oranges of sunset colours (a time of ending leading to renewal), could there be a message for us about the dire environmental crisis – “What have you done?” Or do I go too far?

You can view more of Sheppard’s work here.

*****

And that’s my collection of ten stunning pastel paintings this month!

I’d love to know what you think? I asked a few questions along the way and would love to know if you have any answers. And what about surprises or inspirations? Do any of these pieces encourage you to try something new?

Do please leave a comment about these stunning pastel paintings!!

Until next time,

~ Gail