Once A King

"Once A King"  15" x 18"   Pastels on Paper
SOLD
Click on image for larger version

Until two weeks ago I strongly disliked painting with pastels.  Over the years I have taught its techniques to my students, but have not given it the time of day as a medium I could relate to.  I have complained about how I dislike the way my fingers feel when touching it even though I enjoy looking at a well crafted pastels painting, I've made a declaration "not for me."   Well.  That all changed and without any warning.

Not long ago, I was taken on a delightful canoe trip up the Tugalo River.  Lake Hartwell into which the Tugalo flows and from which it takes most of its waters had been drawn down since spring to several feet below the rivers' banks, leaving a desert of  lake bed and consequent desertion of boaters and their lake folk, but the river remains a haven for canoe lovers.  As we rowed up the river, bare bones of old stumps raising their heads to light, cast breathtaking reflections on the waters.   These images along with the old piers of a once covered bridge caught my attention.

I assumed watercolor was the ideal medium for communicating my impressions, but watercolor wouldn't work.  It was as if the images were demanding I reach inside myself for something else.  Oil wouldn't work either, so reluctantly, I dug out the pastels and the images began to flow into place, surprising me and all those who know me and the disdain I've spouted forth about the medium all these years.

"Once A King" is the second painting in this series.  And I am a reborn painter, now adding pastels to the painting mediums I love.  Imagine that.