Sold!

Pattee Canyon Aspens (20 x 16 pastel on panel)

The other day I opened the mailbox to find an envelope with the return address of my gallery in St. Louis. It had a little bump in the envelope, so I figured it was a Christmas card. Much to my surprise, out fell a check for the sale of this painting! (Yep, the monthly statement was included in a Christmas card. With a tassel.)

Slowly but surely, I'm paying off the debt I incurred while painting this last summer and preparing for my big show in August. What a relief. My wife and I are the type who do not use our credit cards unless necessary, so this debt is stressing me out!

Fortunately (so those of you that are here for my 2D art), I'm feeling the urge to paint again building inside of me. The jewelry thing has about run its course. I have a feeling it will end at about noon on Christmas Eve.

Unfortunately, there are several custom orders awaiting my attention this weekend. I have to work on a charm bracelet for a friend's wife, a bunch of stained glass angel ornaments for my bosses, a couple of earring and bracelet orders from my 'mini jewelry shows' this last week, and a final stock-up for my last mini show this next week. Oh, and there's one more special project that has to be completed, but that's hush-hush. If it turns out, though, it'll be a beaut worth blogging about!

Anyway. This Pattee Canyon painting was painted this last summer out in the field beside my grandparents' home in Missoula, MT. At the time, I was very dissatisfied with it, probably because it didn't turn out anything like I had intended. But now that I look at it again, I think it's pretty good. It's hard to do a painting of basically one color and basically one object (like green trees). There are no wildflowers to add a touch of color, not even any mountains, or a path, or clouds. I ended up having to rely on the shadows to give it that breadth of color that prevents it from being too mundane. Actually, I so did not like this one that I almost washed it off so that I wouldn't have to bring it all the way home on the airplane. But I needed it for my shows, so I kept it as backup.

Little did I know that my 'backup' would sell before any of my 'masterpieces'. What do I know?

Until next time,

PastelGuy

http://www.matthewweld.com/ - pastels

http://www.studio206.etsy.com/ - handmade jewelry for sale

My Roots are Showing!

If you've been a regular reader of my other blog, then you probably are aware that I have roots. Deep ones.

Once you feel you truly belong somewhere, once you achieve that sense of place, there's nothing that can cover those roots.

I'm from Montana. I consider myself a Montanan, even though I haven't been registered as a permanent resident for, oh, about 25 years. But the clean air and big skies run through my veins, and every summer when I return to visit family, it's like going home.

Since I don't live there anymore, I make Montana an inspiration for my art. In looking at the photo above, which has not been altered in any way, can you begin to see how the beauty is everywhere? I think that's what impresses me so about the Big Sky State. No matter where you turn, there's nature at its finest.

When I first started pastels, my wife mentioned that the skies in my paintings were the wrong color of blue. "No they're not!" I replied, whisking my painting back downstairs amid muttered mutterings. "What does she know? Has she ever really looked at the sky?"

It wasn't until our next trip out west that a random comment on the shores of Flathead Lake solved the mystery. "You know, the skies out here in Montana are so blue! I can see why it's called the Big Sky State!" That's it! That's why she thought my skies were the wrong color. Midwestern skies are wimpy by comparison. Pale. Sickly.

Not only the colors, but the shapes, too. If you look closely, nothing in nature is straight. I think that's why I incorporate so many curves into my jewelry. The lake's shoreline curves. So does the river. The clouds certainly aren't straight, and even the tallest Engelmann Spruce tree has some sort of crick in it.

I don't think I could ever paint anything but landscapes. I struggle with the symmetry and perfection of still lifes, and portraits? Forget it. When you grown up in the most beautiful landscape there is, how can you not paint it?

Maybe that's why there were more art galleries than grocery stores in the little town where I grew up.

And now I have kids. And while they visit Montana every summer, their roots will be different. Midwestern. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

PastelGuy

www.matthewweld.com - pastels

www.studio206.etsy.com - jewelry

Greenishness

Green.


Envy, leaves, grass, emeralds, olives, and jade are some of the things that I think of when I see green.


Oh, and celery.


Don't forget frogs, wintergreen, Christmas trees, soybean fields, and the carpet in our house. (Seriously. What were they thinking?)


Neither my wife nor I can wear much green because it tends to make us look sick. I guess that's the Scandinavian ancestry showing through. But green is such a great color. It's cool because it's the fern grotto at the bottom of a waterfall. It's the complicated photosynthesis equations I had to memorize in Plant Physiology (I'll admit to actually enjoying that in a nerdy kind of way). But most of all, it's the energy of living things. In the summer, there are millions of leaves all busily converting light energy into sugars. In the spring there are hundreds of little baby grasshoppers trying to make their way. In the winter, there's the rush of the holiday season (Christmas for us), with the endless shopping, filling jewelry orders, and decorating our Christmas tree. (OK, trees. As in 4 or 5). And the fall? Hmm. Today, I noticed the tiny shoots of green grass sprouting in my lawn's bare patches. (Of course, I also noticed the green aphids on my azaleas - grrr!)


As I look back on a weekend of an outdoor art show with perfect weather (I was a spectator for once!), a NHL preseason hockey game (our first ever in person!), seeding the grass, and hours and hours (like about 8!) of grading papers, I feel fortunate. That's it - lucky. I feel green all over with leprechaun-ish luck for the job that will always dish out the green no matter what the economy does. But most of all, I appreciate my wife, my kids, and my family.


Oh. right. ...and my art. Because without that, I'd be seeing red instead of green.


How lucky are you today?
Pastel Guy

Goals for an Art Blog

Welcome to my blog! As a newbie blogger, I have several reasons for starting a blog:

1. To increase awareness of my art.
2. To allow people (artists, collectors, anyone) to learn more about me and therefore about my art.
3. To provide a place for me to journal. More on this below.

In the interest of actually making a profit at art, I have heard/read that creating a blog is an excellent way to connect with people, not only potential collectors, but also fellow artists that may be able to provide constructive criticism to my work and to my writing and ideas.

I originally hail from Montana. College years were spent at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa securing a BA in Biology, and finding the love of my life (I've now been with her longer than I was without her!). For a career, I've pursued interior design (glorified furniture sales person!), nursery worker, graduate student, dental technician, and currently, 7th grade science and language arts teacher.

Art started in high school with watercolors, with which I obtained some college scholarships (didn't use them, however). Oil painting courses, a one-man show, and my first art award happened in college. Then, about twelve years later, I took a class in stained glass. That led to the craft fair circuit, which I found rewarding for a few years. However, when people tried and barter down an original picture frame priced at $35 that took hours to make because they could go to a box store and buy equivalents for less, I knew that stained glass was not going to be very lucrative.

What I discovered was that the jewelry I made during the stained glass phase was extremely popular, could be massed produced, and sold at a good profit. However, I needed to be able to broaden my offerings, so that led to the new tangent of beaded jewelry, under the company name of Studio 206. This venture was much more lucrative (still is!), and I have slowly moved into the realm of silversmithed and custom jewelry.

On track to define a couple lines that could be mass marketed online, I opted to take a course in pastel paintings at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN from noted pastelist Susan Ogilvie. That brought the jewelry thing to a screeching halt as I realized that I really loved working in two dimensions, and the challenges that it brought. Pastels especially provide a more sensory experience in the art; you actually can rub your fingers raw blending colors. They seem so under admired in the art world, yet they seem like the pure essence of 2D work with their pure pigmented colors and techniques that draw heavily from drawing (no pun intended!). More on this in a future blog!

As a result of the workshop, my New Year's Resolutions shifted to include submission of my work to two venues: a juried art show, and a juried art exhibition. I juried my work to two of each, and was accepted to one of each. The gallery presentation is in Tacoma Washington at the American Art Company, hosted by the Northwest Pastel Society. It runs through August 16th, 2008. The art show is here in southern Illinois August 22 - 24th, called The Midwest Salute to the Arts.

My family and I were actually able to see my painting in situ at the Tacoma Gallery, and were pleased to walk in and find that my painting had won an award! Another first, and definitely a proud moment in my life.

Next weekend is the big show here in Fairview, and I think I'm about ready. I have 19 paintings framed and ready to go, not counting the two that are required for the donation to the children's art section. I have set my new display system up in my garage, so that I can fuss with the placement of the pictures and with the lighting. I have also obtained a machine to start taking credit cards - until now, I have only accepted checks and cash. It's all quite overwhelming - fortunately, I have started displays from scratch for my jewelry and for my stained glass, so I'm not a total novice!

The third reason I started this blog was to give myself a place to journal. In my language arts classes, I keep nagging the kids to keep a journal, because it's a great way to put down your feelings, and in so doing, really exploring those feelings and ideas. This summer, all four of us in my family kept a journal of our vacations. I really enjoyed it, actually, and need to find the time to sit down and put the finishing touches on it. Natually, mine had sketches in it, as well as little momentos that I collected along the way. My wife's (she the type A organizational guru) journal was a list of places we went and the money we spent. She calculated gas mileage while I analyzed the colors and shadows of a thunderstorm.

There's a little about my and my motivations for blogging. I hope to philosophize more on art, pastels, pastel techniques, etc. in later blogs. For now, peace, and enjoy the last half of August!