 Two retired art teaches have pained the sides of buildings on Main Street of their hometown with scenes of the quality of life that people in the community cherish. Carol Kessler and Don Modselewski of Shelbyville, Illinois, have told the story of their hometown through paintings on the walls of buildings. The sides of historical buildings in the town, now covered with their artwork, have become local monuments celebrating the everyday live of the residents of Shelbyville. The artwork is designed to complement the efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce to revitalize the downtown area of Shelbyville. Kessler remarked that he is pleased with the response to the artwork.
Paintings in history and the pastel art of Edgar Degas:
The pastels of Edgar Degas:
The pastel consists of a powdered coloring pigment, mixed with a small amount of adhesive substance (usually gum) and made into a chalk piece shape . The pastel can lend either very rich and very weak tones, but it has a major drawback: the pastel layer, applied on a surface, is extremely short-lived and can break at the slightest touch. To avoid this, the surface is treated with a special compound, which protects the painting, but the colors fade noticeably. Artists began using pastels at the end of the 15th century and in the 18th century, pastel was a fashion, especially in portraiture. Then came a period, when pastels were forgotten and interest in using pastels once again awakened in the second half of the 19th century. Some of the leading artists - Impressionists readily used pastels, valuing it for the freshness of tone and the quickness with which it allowed them to work.
Over the years, Degas increasingly preferred pastels, often in combination with monotypy, lithography or gouache. Pastels attracts the artists with nobility, cleanness and freshness of color, velvety texture of surface and the lively and exciting vibration of strokes. No one could compare the mastery of pastel use with Degas, who used it with vigour and inventiveness, which were achieved by none of his contemporaries. Degas was a subtle colorist, his pastels were harmonic, bright, sometimes in contrast, are built on sharp color contrasts. His paintings appear to be scenes, incidentally taken from the flow of life, but "randomness" is a fruit of deliberate composition, where a cut-out fragment of a figure emphasizes the spontaneity of impressions.
The style of Degas differed with astonishing freedom, he used pastels with bold, broken strokes, sometimes letting them show through the tone of the paper or by adding oil or watercolors to the strokes. One of the discoveries of artists was treating the painting with steam, after which the pastel became soft and it was possible to shade with a brush or the fingers. His later works, are like a kaleidoscope of festive lights. Degas was obsessed with a desire to lend rhythm and movement to a scene. So as to lend a special lustre to paints and make them glow, the artist dissolved pastels in hot water, transforming it into something similar to oil paint and applied it on canvas with a brush. Later works by Degas were also distinguished by an intensity and richness of color, which were complemented by artificial lighting effects, enlarged, almost by planar forms, space constraints, lending them stress-dramatic natures ("Blue Dancers", pastel, State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow).
In a new way, not only did Degas use pastel technology but also used it to create paintings, which were larger in size compared to the creations of other artists made using pastels. Sometimes, he stitched several sheets together so as to obtain the canvas size required by him. In his last works with pastels, made already then when his vision severely deteriorated, majestic figures almost completely dissolved in a fire of blazing colors. American art historian George Heard Hamilton wrote about these works by Degas : "The color of his paintings was the last and greatest gift of an artist to contemporary art. Even with deteriorating sight, the Degas palette remained close to the Palette Fauves". |
