Pastel is one of those interesting areas where definitions of media show their limitations.
Pastel is a dry medium and is applied in may ways like a drawing medium, and of course can be used for drawing; but pastel is often used in applications that are more like painting, and “pastel painting” is a accepted term to a degree, though pastel doesn’t employ the liquid mediums and binders that are associated with paint.
I mention this because if there is one word that I want to use in describing the work of pastel artist Kim Fancher Lordier, it’s “painterly”.
Her passages of rich, textural color, woven together in luscious slabs and chunks into atmospheric wholes, are vibrant with the kind of feeling for the physical nature of the medium that ordinarily prompts the use the word painterly to refer to visible brushstrokes.
Lordier is a California artist who takes inspiration from the turn of the 20th Century California Impressionist painters (see my posts on Granville Redmond, Guy Rose – also here, Hanson Puthuff and George Gardner Symons).
She uses the painterly qualities of pastel to explore the light and atmosphere of the California countryside, her images evocative of time and season as well as place. She juxtaposes bright, high chroma passages with more muted colors, misty atmospheric perspective and subtle, color saturated darks.
Lordier’s website showcases and extensive array of her work. (Click to view the larger image and then use the arrows to click through.) There are also works visible on the sites of the galleries listed below.
Lordier conducts pastel workshops; one is coming up July 10-13 in Mt Vernon, Washington, and anther July 27-28 in San Mateo County, California.
