Even though Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin has used pastel extensively back in 18th century, the Pastel Society of America was only founded a little more than 30 years ago. (After the death of Mary Cassatt and William Merritt Chase, the pastel as a painting medium almost died.)

The opinion that only oil paintings are worth displaying still prevails. Even though pastel works does not need as much attentive preservation as other formats of works on paper such as watercolor or charcoal, there are far less popular in the market or in the museums. Carnegie Museum of Art does not have any pastel works on display while the permanent collection on display at the Butler Museum of American Art contains only one pastel work (by Mary Cassatt). The only exception would be Met probably because they have too many works and much more space.

The show which takes up one big room in the museum is a manifestation of how flexible pastel can be. Among them there are a photo-realism depiction of an alley in sunset by Brian Cobble, Daniel Greene’s full size incisive study of Robert Beverly Hale and Rae Smith’s impressionistic fogging scene.

The study of Robert Beverly Hale by Daniel Greene is magnificent. Simply it is the homage made by one of the most influential portrait artists to the one of the most foremost figure drawing teachers, also the best demonstration of the principles of chiaroscuro and observation from life. The contrast between warm and cool, light and shadow recedes behind an overall impression of an aged man of dignity and wisdom. But a close look of the techniques shows that every stroke is a tour de force of Mr. Greene’s confidence and mastery skills. The final version of the pastel painting has a more meditative feeling because Greene lowed down Mr. Hale’s eyes as if he is brooding and muted the yellowish background with more peaceful green .

If Greene’s work shows that pastel portrait can be as much effective as oil one, Sam Goodsell’s “Threshold” makes sure that everyone realize pastel can make a different portrait from oil medium. The surface of the paper shows through the lightly-covered layers of pastel its own neutral color in both human figure and the background, thus harmonizing the whole picture. Strokes are visibly light and relaxed, yet the natural spontaneity was built on solid form and great composition. Unlike a lot of pastel works I have seen, the palette has only a few limited colors; but they are just as efficient as the huge variety of colors that were used by Greene.

Rae Smith’s Morning Mist #7 is Eric’s favorite of all paintings in the exhibition. The pink purple color that dominates the fog scene is so unconventional yet totally convincing. The suggestive rising sunlight and the mystic depth of wood drew one into the scene.

Brian Cobble’s photo-realistic “Lexington Alley” portrays a sense of uneasiness under the wholesome, somewhat nostalgia sunset light. But a very close examination (which set the alarm on several times) showed that it is not a painting of hygiene touches. Mr. Cobble has put numerous tiny lines of different colors on top of each big color patch, almost like pointillism except the fact they are so light that optically they are submerged into the original color. In some way, he reminds me works by Edward Hopper with the same kind of loneness looming out of balanced geometric suburban setting. It is not the void of human figures in a picture full of evidence of human traces that stirred my feelings, it is the incongruity between austere harsh lines of geometric architecture and the rampant natural grasses which reclaim their territory in the suburban land that made me wonder: As people move out of the center cities, have they got closer to the nature?

The show will continue until Feb 29, 2008.

After the pastel workshop by Kevin Mclatchy at Hoyt Institute of Art, I didn’t create anything satisfying. It is hard to concentrate when you know you have to finish something within one and half hours and it is even harder if you try to do a landscape painting from places which do not inspire you. Nevertheless, the workshop was quite useful for future practices.

Mr. Mclatchy picked up pastel after he took a workshop from Wolf Kahn. The immediacy of the medium and Kahn’s landscape style which lingers between representational and abstract inspired him to work on the medium for the past twelve years.

“You know the nice thing about pastel is that the values are already there. You just have to pick one.” He commented. “In oil, you don’t have such advantages.” Value is his emphasis in the workshop. He first instructed everyone to mass in white, gray and black in order to understand the shape and relationship. At that time, I wished there would be a digital camera so that I could take pictures in B&W! It was very hard for me to filter out all the color information or convert colors into grayscale.


In his demonstration, he didn’t sketch in detail: No scale calculation, no compositional planning, and no value drawing. He simply started drawing a few lines for the tree trunk, his main object in the middle of the paper and felt how to evolve afterwards. There arose at times myths where those lines ended in relationship to others, which seemed not only puzzled me but also the artist. But he quickly moved along and decided, at the same time when he was drawing, which direction to go. The more pastel pigments he laid down, the more specific the subject became, and the more clearly how the myth was going to be solved.

Unfortunately, his contemporary style didn’t fit in most of the reference books with traditional approach in minds. When I tried to mimic his style: loose strokes, scribbling lines, and most of all drawing with energy, the fundamental rules were totally forgotten. Colors are not strengthening each other, light and shade lose their suggestive meaning and layers of pastel soon dulled the Canson paper.

In his book, Wolf Kahn says artists should not paint with insights, but with instincts. Yet in workshop, insights and habits can be described and taught, yet instincts, fleeting like light, are indescribable. Kahn said it won’t work if one focuses too much on those rules. Great art comes out of artist’s hands and mind undisturbed by those established laws; although it is true that afterwards one may find those underlining rules, while never been sensed consciously during the creation of the work, do apply to it or even contribute to its success.

Such statements, which philosophizes the creation of art work, can hardly be applied to amateurs, who are as hard to remember those rules (composition, color, balance, etc) as for artists to forget them. Pragmatic tips can be better grasped in workshops, although it is true some of Kevin's metaphorical instruction may be understood a few years later as I progress (if only I could still remember what he said by then).

But he did not force everyone to make some changes and try to show demonstration directly on participant’s work. Instead he tried to understand from everyone’s perspective and then gave some suggestions. This is really what I appreciated from the workshop. As a student of Kahn, Mr. McLatchy values the spirit of exploration. Kahn once suggests that once one begins to grasp, he should stop immediately and move on to something new. Otherwise, he falls into the trap of painting by habits. (I asked Mr. Mclatchy what he thought of some old masters who repeatedly painted the same subject with perfection. He said some works may seem perfect, but lack of emotions and energy. )

Well, my pastel drawing is far from perfection after one day workshop, but it made me excited with the medium and inspired me to try more.

Kevin Mclatchy's website is here.

The opening reception of recent works by Joe Witzel is held at PANZA Gallery in Millvale yesterday. Joe, living in Troy hill of Pittsburgh, frequently drives up to Moraine State Park to draw the goldenrods in different seasons. When I stood in a full room of goldenrod paintings in vivid colors and eye-catching forms, the first question I asked is why I didn't see the beauty of them before, which have filled the slopes of shopping malls around Pittsburgh with their untamed green and bright yellow.

All goldenrods are painted with pastels, but they look more like oil paintings from Van Gogh: short strokes wildly drawing in diagonal manner, the majority in green and yellow, and the visible thickness of bright yellow tints built up on other layers. All these indicate energetic creation processes in plein-air. Later, Joe told me most of the works were done within three hours range on-site, with possibly some final touch-ups in his studio.

Looking closely at those pastel paintings shows that Joe specifically has chosen grey green paper for most of his works because he did not physically blend colors. Thus a base color with the right tone and hue is cruicial. Without being covered fully with Unison pastel sticks, the papers , here and there, show the base color and give the depth and vibrance to the whole pictures.

In most cases, he places strokes of different color on top of others. Sometimes feathering or scumbling are used but kept at minimum. Therefore, each stroke preserves its pristine freshness, yearning to tell people how the whole image comes into being from hands with masterful drawing skills once you can step back to allow different strokes of colors blend into your eyes.

The Canson paper that he used for the majority of the pictures cannot hold many layers thus mistakes made can hardly be corrected without compromising the raw state of stroke work. He told me there are some failed pieces but these survived successful works look incredibly crispy and clear compared to Wolf Kahn’s haze color patches.

Other ink and pencil drawings show Joe is very efficient in his drawings. Each line has its meaning. There is no scribble or smudge. Shades and shadow are done by changes in intensity and density of short strokes. If Wolf Kahn’s pastel determines his oil work, then Joe’s economical stroke style in pastel can be fully appreciated in those ink and pencil drawings.

Mainly Goldenrod – Recent works by Joe Witzel can be seen until Sept 29, 2007 at PANZA Gallery.

The Hoyt Institute of Fine Art now features a special exhibition of works by Wolf Kahn in pastel, a medium what Khan calls his determining medium. On the one hand, it is special to show works in a medium whose directness and freshness are less known compared to oil paint; on the other hand, the show is more business-driven. The collection is from Khan’s associated gallery and every painting is for sale. The underlining drawback is that it is not a flashback of artist’s growth and changes in his long artistic career, but instead a show of recent works: All works are freshening even bordering experimenting, but none go beyond his own color theory which signifies his late mature works.

It is almost impossible to describe Khan’s style in one or two words. In his early days, he was influenced by George Seurat. Such an impact of the optical color-mixing from pointillism resides in his pastel works even though his subjects matter has become succinct to almost abstract. In the current show, he chose white water-color paper exclusively. The irregular rugged surface naturally pops out in forms of tiny spots optically mixed with color patches, thus providing a more luminous atmosphere. His blending, on the other hand, reminds me of George Inness. Layers of colors float on top of each other as if there exists such inner glow that drives those colors out of the paper.

Kahn did not deny the influence of modern painters which is synthesized in his works. When being viewed from a distance, Khan’s semi-minimalism works indicate more depth in colors than space from perspective. Such depths loosely relates him with Rothko, however, they differ not only in subjects (Khan’s are more representational), but also in the degree of meditation. In Kahn, there is an illusion of movement in those abstract colored shapes. When those pastel works are viewed closely, the traces of creativity can be as easily identified as those in Pollock’s works: either in the complicated light on the wall, or among the branches of woods, he applied his strokes in abandoning style, yet the layer relationship between each color seems both improvising and controlled. When his works are examined with focus on stroke structure, one can see how he dragged in effort the defining lines on top of other base layers. If De Kooning explored the possibility of the driest method for oil painting with his newspaper, direct tube, then Khan somehow tries to reach the same kind of stroke effect by making the driest medium look wet. Those strokes, thin or thick, are a variety from less defined to very rugged and demands viewers to explore hidden energy under the peace.

But above all, viewing works by Kahn is essentially an examination of his signified color theory. No matter whether the painting is abstract (for woods topics) or representational (for barn topics), it is the colors that draw spectators to discover beyond the subject matters: How do the colors interplay with shapes and lines and what kind of mood do they lead to?

In his woods series, paintings are composed of levels of stripes, triangles or irregular rectangles, whose simplicity is disrupted by vertical tree trunks. (The tree trunks are further disillusioned from a variety of horizontal short branches) However, colors play up the foreground from confrontational relationship but play down trunks by dissolving them. Thus when the crowns are founded again popping out of the sky, there is a sense of intimacy and satisfaction obtained through the discovery.

Here are some of his words about colors:

For the artist, purple has special qualities. The smallest variation in density of tone is significant. Purple can be made to appear airy or heavy. (Try to make a heavy yellow or an airy black.) It can describe a wide range of psychological meanings, from celebratory to tragic.

Bright orange is one of those really good attention-grabbing colors. It resists being used in a subtle way....It seems made to order to represent intensity, exuberance, and heightened feelings generally, without the hidden threats as does the color red. It relates wonderfully to cool blues....It has a very complex relation with magenta, red-purple, and an equally strong one with blue green....

There remains the question of when, exactly, to employ this useful color...The answer is: in fall, and at the time of brilliant sunsets. Then no one can quarrel with one’s use of orange, since it is sanctioned by actual occurance in nature.

The exhibition “Wolf Kahn Pastels” can be seen at Hoyt Institute of Fine Art until Sept 28, 2007.