Most people meet pastel as a box of chalky sticks in a school art room and never think about it again. That is a shame, because in the right hands it does something no other medium manages.
It is pure pigment
A soft pastel stick is pigment and just enough binder to hold its shape. There is no oil, no acrylic polymer, nothing between the colour and your eye. That is why a pastel painting looks lit from within in a way a photograph of it never captures — and why photographing pastel work is a running frustration for anyone who makes it.
It cannot be undone
Oil can be scraped back. Acrylic can be painted over. Pastel can be adjusted, but only so far — the paper holds a finite amount of pigment, and once the tooth is full, it is full. Every mark is closer to permanent than in almost any other medium, which means the work has to be decided before it is made.
It suits some subjects better than others
Fur, weather, water, skin, petals — anything soft-edged or atmospheric. Look through the collection and you will notice the pattern: animals, oceans, flowers, rain. Hard geometry is possible but fights the material. The vintage vehicles work precisely because the light on old paint is doing the heavy lifting, not the panel lines.
About DawnE
DawnE has worked in soft pastel for decades, out of Fayetteville, Tennessee. She paints what she notices — a tractor by a barn, four children under umbrellas in the rain, a lion standing beside a lamb — and she paints each one once. The originals are one of a kind and sell only once. Prints follow for the pieces people ask about most.