Shirley Smith painted a portrait of her mother-in-law.
Sharon Adamy
Two of the presenting artists prefer painting people as well as animals. Although accomplished in all subjects, Shirley Smith prefers portraiture of people as well as animals. While doing a commission piece she may take up to 32 hours working on the resemblance. A shorter time is involved when painting wild animals as the subjects do not tend to be picky about their appearance. Sharon Adamy paints her people in crowds. Market and restaurant scenes are her expression and are often a combination of various photos and her imagination as she concocts stories around her characters and everyday life. Adamy is a Signature Member of the Pastel Societies of New Mexico and Arizona and has been painting with pastels for 30 plus years.
Included in the AOM display is an excerpt from Adamy’s Breezy Saturday. Since Sharon composes as she paints, one can get an idea of how her compositions progress from beginning to end.
Ila Larson began painting with pastels around five years ago. The attraction to pastel was its seductive colors and Ila uses those colors to paint the landscapes she encounters while traveling extensively. Larson is adept at painting skies and clouds so realistically wispy that one might say she “paints the air itself.” Larson is also an accomplished quilter and uses both art forms to express her attraction to robust color.
One of our Pastelists is better known for her colored pencil artwork. Marsha Lyons admits to using pastels on occasion—especially for painting landscapes. Colored pencil creations take a greater amount of time than do pastels, while pastels are somewhat messier to use. Lyons, like many of our featured artists, pursues many activities in PebbleCreek while keeping her passion for art alive.
The appeal of being hands-on and not at the end of a brush lured Nancy Stifter to pastels. After taking a class at the Creative Arts Center she discovered that she preferred painting landscapes and still life. It does take time and effort in the beginning to be able to master pastels. One must learn that a very light touch is basic to building the layers that are part of a pastel painting. Stifter arrived in PebbleCreek and started artwork for the first time ever. Like a kid in a candy store, she has tried many of the mediums offered, but presently leans more toward pastel.
With this issue the special Artist of the Month series concludes. All 10 of the featured artists are as individual in their expression of their art as are the pastel sticks they covet. One draws and layers line over line while another blends the pastel with her finger. Another spreads a gel over the paper and scrapes pastel across it, and still another melts pastel into the crevices of paper to softly stain an undercoating. What all these artists have in common is a passion to create, to share what they create, and to have a spectacular time while doing so.