Devdatta Padekar

Song of Spring © Devdatta Padekar

Name:  Devdatta Padekar

URL:  http://devdattapadekar.com

Bio: Devdatta Padekar  was born in 1978 into an artistic Indian family.He received his B.F.A. (Painting) First Class First with Distinction from Sir J.J.School of Art, Mumbai, India – 1999. His M.F.A. (Portraiture) First Class First with Distinction followed in 2001. His studies in London were rewarded with an M.A. (Drawing) from Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK - 2005, and he followed this with studies at the Florence Academy of Art, Italy in 2007. He has had solo exhibitions in India and in Italy. His work has received awards in India, England and Canada. He was featured in the October 2011 issue of the Pastel Journal.

Medium: Pastel, oil.

Subjects: Figurative. Devdatta strives to integrate three major qualities into his paintings: simplicity, subtlety and innocence. He tries to portray rapport between human beings and nature, and to that effect, he depicts these subjects superbly with the use of subtle colours. 

Style: Representational. Devadatta's style of painting is grounded in strong academicism. 

Navigation: Links remain available at all times.

Gallery: Gallery 1;  Gallery 2;  Gallery 3.

Image View:  Galleries open in new page. There are more oils on view than there are pastels – I suspect the website needs updating as the paintings that appeared in the Pastel Journal are not displayed yet. Thumbnail images are enlarged in a viewer. Information is generally provided on medium and dimension by hovering over the thumbnail but too much coding is visible – the webmaster needs to correct this. Images cannot be saved.

Blog/Demo: No

Linda Oslin

Wildflowering © Linda Oslin

Name:  Linda Oslin

URL:  http://lindaoslin.com/

Bio: While her professional life was in the world of business, Linda Oslin remained true to her artistic vision by teaching evening adult art classes. She is now a full-time artist, and her paintings have received awards in national and international juried shows over the past 20 years. She is a juried member of the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, a juried signature member of the Pastel Society of the West Coast and the International Association of Pastel Societies, a charter member of the Portrait Society of America, Inc., supporting member of the Chico Art Centers;and a Supporting Member of the Red Bluff Art Gallery. Her paintings have appeared in the Pastel Journal, The Artist's Magazine, Art Calendar Magazine, and the Encyclopedia of Living Artists.  Linda Oslin has studied with Daniel E. Greene, John Howard Sanden, Bob Gerbracht, Anita Wolff, Salvatore Casa, and Eddy Martinez Hood.

Medium: Pastel, oil, watercolor and acrylic, colored pencil, graphite.

Subjects: Still Life; Landscape; Figurative. There is an interesting “tapestry” in the Figurative gallery, called Models, which is worth  a look.

Style: Representational.

Navigation: Links remain available on left or bottom of page

Gallery: Animals; Automotive; Figurative (pastels); Landscapes (some pastels); Portraits (pastels); Still Life (some pastels).

Image View:  Galleries open in new page. Thumbnail images are enlarged in a further page; or in a viewer; download is possible. Information is generally provided on medium and dimension but there are exceptions. Wildflowering is 20 x 16 ins, 600 x 478, 47 KB.

Blog/ Demo: No

In Memoriam Theodore Lukits

Name: Theodore Lukits
URL: http://theodorelukits.org/
Bio: I am indebted to Jeffrey Morseburg, author of the Lukits website, for the following, gleaned directly from the website.  Theodore Lukits (1897 - 1992) was a fascinating  character and a versatile artist who painted moody plein-air landscapes, dynamic murals and colorful portraits of Hollywood's Golden Age beauties. In his paintings, Lukits successfully reconciled academic draftsmanship with an innovative sense of color. He was a staunch and thoroughly trained traditionalist who mastered the methods and ideals of the French Academie des Beaux-Arts that he learned from the French-trained teachers and then, in turn, passed on to generations of his own students.
However, Lukits sought to expand the boundaries of classical painting. He did this through the bold use of intense color in his portraits and his pursuit of the most transient and ephemeral of nature's moods in his landscapes. He was a perfectionist who sought to control every aspect of his artistry. Lukits ground his own paints, crafted his brushes, and created the pastels he relied on out-of-doors. He shaped his own unique palettes, and even carved the frames he exhibited his paintings in. Lukits lived a long life and by its end he was able to witness the painters of his youth regaining the recognition they had lost to the vicissitudes of artistic taste. Thanks to the artists who kept the flame of traditional art alive, those who never abandoned their love of beauty, harmony and craftsmanship, a new era has dawned like one of Theodore Lukits' bold sunrises lighting the horizon.
Subjects: Landscape; portraits; figurative; illustration.
Style: Representational.
Navigation: Main links remain visible. The website was created by Jeffrey Morseburg, a student of Lukits, and owner of Morseburg Galleries since 1958.  Only the biography link is non-functional.
Gallery: There are numerous galleries to enjoy on this site. The pastel gallery alone contains 12 sub-galleries: Sunrise and sunset; Mountain scenes; Cloudscapes; Dream landscapes; High altitude series; Nocturnes; Southern California; Deserts; California Marines; Arizona and New Mexico; Landscapes and Figures; Rainbows.
Image View: Each sub-gallery opens on a new page; images will enlarge in a pop-up and can be saved.

In Memoriam Arny Karl

Name:  Arny Karl

URL:  http://arnykarl.org/

Bio: Arny Karl (1940 - 2000) was a pastelist who played an important role in the revival of plein-air painting in southern California in the 1980s and 1990s. A student of Theodore Lukits (see following post), the Italian-born Karl continued the tradition of working directly from nature in the pastel medium that Lukits began in the 1920s. Karl began painting out of doors in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but did not begin exhibiting his work professionally until the late '70s. He also became an important mentor to now-prominent painters like Peter Adams (b. 1952) and Tim Solliday (b. 1952), who made some of their first outdoor painting trips with Karl. The main emphasis in Karl's work was always to capture the unique mood that he saw before him. He was always drawn to nature's more transient effects - the colors of an intense sunset reflected on the face of a cliff, the blue mood of evening or the dramatic effects of a lightning storm. Arny Karl died too young, but his legacy was his embrace of nature's fleeting moments.

Subjects: Landscape.

Style: Representational. For me there is a 1930s feeling about Karl’s work, which is not to diminish it in any way, but it does seem part of art history.

Navigation: I don’t know who maintains this website – the contact page comes up with an error 404. There is a refereence to a 2008 exhibition, but I strongly suggest you view these pages while they are still online.

Gallery: Karl’s Art: Coastal Views; Mountain Scenes; Desert Vistas; Southern California; Other Subjects.

Image View:  Each gallery opens on a new page, where you must scroll from end to end to view the paintings – either use the scroll bar, if visible, or the left/right arrows on your keyboard. Titles and dimensions are mentioned. Download is possible.

Jan Myers, PSA

Name:  Jan Myers

URL:  >http://www.janmyers-artist.com/

Bio: Colorado artist Jan Myers received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1978. She has been a Member of the Pastel Society of America since 1993, when there were only 650 members. Jan is a member of the Colorado Pastel Society, and the Pastel Society of the West Coast. She has had one-woman annual exhibits, from 1995 - 2003,  in Gallery A, Taos, New Mexico. She was featured in The Pastel Journal, May/June 2000

Medium: Pastel. “Soft Pastels are a very expressive medium. Working on a soft white Stonehenge printmakers’ paper I use my hands to blend large washy areas then add detail on top of these. I like to contrast bold scribbling strokes with softly blended areas. A painting is never finished in one session. I come back to each painting at least ten times. Unfinished paintings are stacked on a shelf with glassine between each one. There are always about 60 unfinished paintings in the stack. My thinking and mood each morning dictate my work for the day.”

Subjects: Landscape.

Style: Representational.

Navigation: Seems that the website has not been updated since 2008.

Gallery: View Original Pastel Paintings

Image View:  Thumbnails are titled, with size, and open in a new page, where they can be saved.  Evening, Desert View, Grand Canyon is  22x30 ins, 600 x 442, 21.4 KB

Blog/ Demo: No

Urania Christy Tarbet

Name:  Urania Christy Tarbet, PSA

URL:  http://www.uraniachristytarbet.com/index.html

Bio: As a child, Urania Christy Tarbet was greatly influenced by her famous cousin, Howard Chandler Christy, noted illustrator and portrait artist. “As a young girl my mother and I visited his studio,” she says. “The wonderful smell of the paint, the finished and unfinished paintings, the model stand, and the general feeling of the whole art scene filled my young soul with joy. I knew then that I wanted to be an artist."  Her formal art education began at Pasadena College in Southern California; followed by two years of intense studies at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles  and the Sergei Bongart School of Art, Santa Monica.  Workshops with nationally known artists including Joyce Pike, Albert Handell, Daniel Greene, and Claude Ellington (portraits) served to hone and refine her skills. Urania's work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, France, Canada, Taiwan and Mexico. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Mary and Fred Trump Award, the Flax Award Women Artists of the West, and the Pastel Award of Excellence. She has conducted pastel and oil workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Italy and Scotland.  Her work is included in ten how-to-art books; and has been the subject of many articles published in the American Artist, The Artist's Magazine, Art Review, Leisure Painter, Designer's Illustrated and Sacramento Home. Urania is represented in print by Aaron Ashley, New York. She is on the editorial board of the Pastel Journal.

An El Dorado County resident of 25 years, Urania  is a member of the Pastel Society of America, Signature and Life Member of the Salmagundi Club, Artist Member of the California Art Club, Pasadena, and of Knickerbocker Artists, and Signature Member both of the Pastel Society of Canada, and the National League of American Pen Women, Artist and Writer Member of the Master Circle of the International Association of Pastel Societies; on top of all that she holds honorary memberships in numerous Pastel Societies.

Urania is the Founder/President Emeritus of the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS), established in 1994.

Medium: Pastel. Oil.

Subjects: Landscape; Floral.

Style: Representational.  Tarbet says that the French Impressionists have had the most influence on her work. And her dream came true when she painted in Monet’s Garden in Giverny.

Navigation: Links remain at top of page.

Gallery: Gallery.

Image View:  Galleries page is an Adobe Flash Player presentation, so download is not possible. The presentation is a little diffent for the usual slideshow, in that the thumbnails do not appear until you do a mouseover on the numbers that run along the bottom of the viewer. There is no information on the dimension of the original piece.

Cushla Naegele

Name:  Cushla Naegele

URL:  http://www.cushlanaegelestudio.com/3/artist.asp?ArtistID=25826&Akey=6P346SAF

Bio: Cushla Naegele art studies began in High School at the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, followed by The Art Student's League, Cornell University College of Art, Architecture and Planning, The New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, and she received my MFA in Painting from Brooklyn College, City University of NY.  Her pastel work is entirely self-taught, her influences ranging from Degas to Lautrec - primarily in the sense of what they were able to achieve with the medium.

Medium: Pastel. Oil. Charcoal. She draws with chunky black charcoal and delicate pastels on a variety of supports - most often paper, either hand primed with ArtSpectrum pastel primer or not.  She favours Rembrandt, Schminke and Unison pastels. Naegele says: The process captivates me, watching as faces emerge from the raw materials of compressed dust and gum Arabic and the energy of my hand and arm, filling a blank two-dimensional space.
This quote reminds me of a poem by Lawrence Durrell: ...surely you won’t ever/Be puzzled by a poem or disturbed by a poem/Made like fire by the rubbing of two sticks. (To Ping-Kû, Asleep).

Subjects: Landscape; Figurative. Naegele regards these subjects as interchangeable. She views landscape as a form of portraiture of local topography, geology, and geography as well as roads, fences, and cultivated fields. Her portraits of locations led to portraits of people, representations of a moment in the subject's life, the geology of an emotion, geography of a countenance, the structure of a piece of jewelry, a hat, a collar.

Style: Representational.

Navigation: A bit odd in that you can access the portfolios from the home page, but the galleries are not accessible from the information page although the links are still there at the top of the page.

Gallery: Portfolios: Portraits – Pastel; People – Charcoal; Landscape – Oil; Landscape – Drawings.

Image View:  Galleries open in new page. Thumbnail images are enlarged in a viewer; download is blocked. Information is not provided on medium or dimension. However Hands and Feet is among the largest pastels on the website at about 76 x 111 cm.

Blog/ Demo: No