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NOVEMBER 3RD - JAN FREEMAN - MIXED MEDIA, COASTAL LANDSCAPE

Our Chair opened the meeting with some announcements on local exhibitions and other activities of interest to our members, and went on to report on our recent exhibition in the Kingfisher Centre. This had been very well received with many comments on the high quality of the paintings and a large number of completed voting slips from the public. The votes for the best painting went to Cheryl Clayton, Sue Westcott and Karen Read in first, second and third places respectively. In the junior section, Joe Geehan and Renee and Joanie Landreth took first, second and third places.

Jan Freeman was introduced to give her talk and demonstration of portraits in pastel. Members are always interested to how the career of a successful artist had developed and was intrigued to learn that Jan had made quite a late start. When living in America, her circumstances left her with sufficient spare time to enrol in local art classes where her talent became apparent. More development followed until she was getting commissions and eventually arriving at her present position where she works full time on projects, commissions, teaching and demonstrating.

Jan explained that her demonstration painting was to be a portrait of her young son at his violin practice, she had prepared a pastel sketch on her sand-faced support and would work from a reference photograph. Photographs rather than sketches were here chosen reference source and she stressed how the quality of the lighting should contribute to the photograph. Describing her technique, Jan said that she never rubbed-in or smudged her pastels and never used a fixative. Working from dark to light, she worked on her background with a hard pastel stick, building up the dark blue colour with light diagonal strokes. Interest was added to the large dark area by the introduction of similar colours of the same tone e.g. purple. Work continued in the same way on the face and hair while Jan explained various aspects of her technique. The fair hair of the subject was emphasised by its backlighting and the contrast in the hair enhanced by the use of black in the chosen range of colours. Working downwards to avoid pastel dust falling on to finished parts of the painting, the lower parts of the subject were painted in the same way with subtle variations in the larger areas of colour together with patches of reflected colour. Shadow areas were adjusted and highlights added to complete a successful and attractive portrait. Many pastel portraitists seem to emulate the appearance of oil paintings in their work but Jan’s’ portraits are distinctive and unmistakably pastel.

The audience showed their appreciation for this entertaining and informative presentation and for the opportunity to see a wide range of examples of Jan’s work.

David Price