VIVID COLOR

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo drew with natural chalks in the late 15th century, usually in red, white and black. In the early 16th century powdered color pigments were mixed with a binder such as gum Arabic, fish or animal glue and formed into sticks to provide a wide variety of colors

- JOHN O'HERN

John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) was the first American painter to work in pastels. He created 55 pastel portraits before leaving for England in 1774. Several of them are in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art which notes they are “a rare achievement for a colonial painter in such a costly, rare, and painstaking medium.”

Pastels have gone in and out of favor over the years but today are considered a worthy medium, no longer costly and rare, but still painstaking.

The Pastel Society of America (PSA) was founded in 1972 to serve “the pastel artist, her/his public, and the artistic community through education, example, and activism for the medium.”

Liz Haywood-Sullivan is a master pastelist with PSA and, from 2013 to 2017, was president of the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS). She says, simply, “Light is my muse, landscape my choice, pastel my passion.” Her landscapes are often scenes along the south shore of Boston where she lives.

The ever-changing saltmarshes are depicted in their warm fall beauty in Turning Tides, its title a reminder that not only are there seasonal changes in the marsh but twice daily changes as the sea floods and ebbs. Over the years, her approach to using the medium has changed as well. The trees in the distance, rendered as silhouettes and the suggestion of the verticality of the grasses in the foreground would have been rendered with more detail in the past. The painting is a testament to the versatility of the medium and her skill in mastering it.