A pastel is an art medium that consist of powdered pigment and a binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, or a pan of color, though other forms are possible. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those used to produce some other colored visual arts media, such as oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process.
Julian Alden Weir was an American impressionist painter and member of the Cos Cob Art Colony near Greenwich, Connecticut. Weir was also one of the founding members of "The Ten", a loosely allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically unified group.
Daniel E. Greene PSA, NA, AWS was an American artist who worked in the media of pastels and oil painting. The Encyclopædia Britannica considered Mr. Greene the foremost pastelist in the United States. His paintings and pastels are in over 700 public and private collections in the United States and abroad. Highly regarded as a portrait artist, his subjects have included leaders of Government, Banking, Education and Industry. Some of his sitters include First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Ayn Rand, Astronaut Walter Schirra, William Randolph Hearst, “Wendy’s” founder Dave Thomas, Commentator Rush Limbaugh, Composer Alan Menken, Bryant Gumbel and Bob Schieffer of CBS TV. Governmental Portraits include Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, Governor Paul Laxalt of Nevada, Governor Gerald Baliles of Virginia, Governor Benjamin Cayetano of Hawaii, and Governor Fob James of Alabama. Business sitters include the chairmen of the boards of Honeywell, Coca-Cola Company, Dupont Corporation, Endo Pharmaceuticals, American Express, The New York Stock Exchange and IBM. Mr. Greene has also painted the Deans, Presidents and Benefactors of Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Tufts, Duke, Columbia, North Carolina, West Point, Delaware, Penn State, New York, Princeton, Rutgers, Yale and Harvard Universities.
Donato Giancola is an American artist specializing in narrative realism with science fiction and fantasy content, including images for Tolkien's Middle-earth. He has won many Chesley Awards and other honors for his illustrations.
Thomas Richman Blackshear II is an African-American artist whose paintings adorn many Evangelical churches. He is also a sculptor and a designer of stamps and ornaments, often with African American or Western themes.
Jean-Étienne Liotard was a Genevan painter, art connoisseur and dealer. He is best known for his detailed, strikingly naturalistic portraits in pastel, and for the works from his stay in Turkey. A Huguenot of French origin and citizen of the Republic of Geneva, he was born and died in Geneva, but spent most of his career in stays in the capitals of Europe, where his portraits were much in demand. He worked in Rome, Istanbul, Paris, Vienna, London, and other cities.
The Federation of British Artists (FBA) consists of nine art societies, and is based at Mall Galleries in London where the societies' Annual Exhibitions are held. The societies represent living artists working in the United Kingdom who create contemporary figurative art. Mall Galleries aim to 'promote, inspire and educate audiences about the visual arts.'
Theodore Nikolai Lukits was a Romanian American portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of glamorous actresses of the silent film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and pastel landscapes have received greater attention.
Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.
Barkley L. Hendricks was a contemporary American painter who made pioneering contributions to Black portraiture and conceptualism. While he worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career, Hendricks' best known work took the form of life-sized painted oil portraits of Black Americans.
Susanna J. Coffey is an American artist and educator. She is the F. H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives and works in New York City. She was elected a member the National Academy of Design in 1999.
Michelangelo Pistoletto is an Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist. Pistoletto is acknowledged as one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera. His work mainly deals with the subject matter of reflection and the unification of art and everyday life in terms of a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Jerry Weiss is an American figurative, landscape, and portrait painter and a writer. He studied classical drawing, and his career has centered on both the figure, and landscape. He says he is "intrigued by the portrait and figure as a most sacred subject."
John Nelson Shanks was an American artist and painter. His best known works include his portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, first shown at Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York City, April 24 to June 28, 1996, and the portrait of president Bill Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery.
Peter Seitz Adams is an American artist. His body of work focuses on landscapes and seascapes created en plein air in oil or pastel as well as enigmatic figure and still-life paintings. He is noted for his colorful, high-key palette and broad brushwork. Adams has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums, including throughout California, the Western United States, and on the East Coast in Philadelphia, Vermont, and New York. Adams is the longest serving President of the California Art Club and has served on its board of directors in Pasadena, California from 1993 to 2018. He is also a writer on subjects relating to historic artists for the California Art Club Newsletter, as well as for a number of the organization's exhibition catalogs.
James West Fraser is an American artist. One of the leading artists in the representational/En Plein Air tradition, Fraser has built his career on richly painted, atmospheric vistas of cities, coasts, and landscapes.
Laura Coombs Hills (1859–1952) was an American artist and illustrator who specialized in watercolor and pastel still life paintings, especially of flowers, and miniature portrait paintings on ivory. She became the first miniature painter elected to the Society of American Artists, and was a founder of the American Society of Miniature Painters. She also worked as a designer and illustrated children's books for authors such as Kate Douglas Wiggin and Anna M. Pratt.
Benjamin Hope is a British artist, based in London.
Charles Clark Reid was an American painter, illustrator, and teacher, notable for his watercolor style. He won numerous national and international awards for both his watercolor and oil works, and also hosted many workshops in the US and abroad. He published numerous books and instructional DVDs and created a postage stamp and an iconic ad campaign with his watercolor depictions. His watercolor works and oil paintings are in private and college museum collections.
