Bobbie Shatsoff Media

Pastels

The word pastel is derived from the French word "pastiche". Technically, pastel is pure powdered pigment that, when seen under a microscope, looks like a diamond with many facets. Because its diamond-like structure reflects light like a prism, no other medium matches pastel's luminosity and color. Pastel (often confused with chalk, which is limestone and dye) is powdered pure pigment mixed with methyl cellulose, a non-greasy binder, to form a paste that is shaped into a stick and set to dry.

Pastel is as close as an artist can come to working with pure color. Its convenience and immediacy enables the artist to capture the moment with purity of color and luminosity that exceeds any other medium. A pastel artist puts color on top of color - sometimes many layers - to create color vibrations that delight the eye. Extensive color choices, ranging from soft to brilliant, make pastel an intimate medium with infinite possibilities. Artists use pastel to create both drawings and paintings. It can be combined with watercolor, gouache, acrylic, charcoal, or pencil in mixed-media paintings. When protected by frame and glass, pastel is the most stable and permanent of all media, for it never cracks, darkens, yellows, or fades. Today, pastel has the same fine art stature as oil and watercolor.

Historically, pastel can be traced back to the fifteenth century. Leonardo da Vinci introduced pastel using "the dry colors method" as a highlighting technique for drawings. Pastel emerged as a major force in eighteenth century portraiture. Rosalba Carriera was among the first to work exclusively in pastel. With the advent of impressionism, new techniques appeared and subjects expanded to include landscapes and nudes. Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frank Reaugh and James McNeil Whistler featured pastels among their most important works. Many of our most renowned living artists have distinguished themselves in pastel, enriching the art world with this beautiful  and lasting medium.

Collage

Collage began almost 800 years ago when early Japanese artists pasted paper backgrounds for their descriptive poetry. The technique of pasting paper was not considered an art form until Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began embellishing their canvases with glued materials in 1912. This art form has continued with Surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and others who used many materials to express themselves in their dreamlike ideas. Today collage has a permanent place in the listing of art media.

“Layering as an approach to creative expression recognizes the many dimensions that shape an artist’s sense of personal growth and achievement. It articulates a procedure that is equally additive and subtractive as it reaches for completion and authenticity. It also brings into focus how many strata of the mind one actually taps during the process of conceiving, nurturing and refining a creative idea or product.

The term layering, when used metaphorically, can explain the mind’s search for both personal and communal meaning. It lends itself easily to an interdisciplinary mindset that draws connections between all domains of knowledge while blurring the edges of traditional media of expression. Essentially, it honors the human quest to reach beyond boundaries to make sense of our human condition. Like the two-faced Roman god, Janus, the artist looks both forward and backward in charting his or her own journey in time and space…..” Richard Newman, President, Society of Layerists in Multi-Media