Pastels

Of the mediums I work with, pastels I can really get my hands into, quite literally. During my time at college, initially, I was discouraged from touching and blending with my fingers by my pastel professor, but after resisting for so long and seeing my results, she couldn't argue and let me be. But this is what makes pastels so unique from my other drawings, namely sculpting with the colors. If you know me personally, this is rather unusual as I am prone to work very clean and fine. To put it simply, I don't care to get my hands dirty. But despite my nature, I feel compelled to do otherwise with this medium. And I think the only comparison I can make to such a compulsion is the painter J.M.W. Turner.

"...Delacroix is taken aback that [Turner] looks rather like a farmer with unwashed hands. Oh, there's dirt under Turner's nails, all right, but it's likely to be gamboge yellow or Prussian blue, not farm muck. And the worst thing is that he seems to wear his unwashed hands like a badge of professional pride.

"When a young gentleman aspirant artist comes to see him, Turner grabs his lily-white hands and growls 'You're no artist'.

"Turner himself uses his fingers to make his art, keeps a nail deliberately untrimmed so he could wield it like a claw to cut into the paint surface."

-Simon Schama's Power of Art, "Turner"; BBC Video

Certainly I don't get as messy as Turner, and his work was with oil paints, not pastels, but there is a definite, mutual satisfaction in being able to touch and mold the medium on the surface; almost like working with clay, but in a two-dimensional sense. And after all, it's only natural to want to touch, isn't it?

Anyway, I've lingered long enough on my feeling towards the medium. Here are examples of my work in pastels. This collection will be updated, just like my paintings and the others.