My painting, Montreal Art Market was accepted into the Southeastern Pastel Society's 16th Annual Juried Show at Ogelthorpe University in Atlanta. This is currently on exhibit at the Ogelthorpe Art Museum. More details, including images of the work that is in the show,  are available on the Southeastern Pastel Society website at www.southeasternpastel.org. 
Click on "Juried Shows" and then on 2010 Juried Exhbition.

My pastel, Judith Baking, has been accepted into the International Association of Pastel Societies 16th Exhibit at the Butler Museum in Youngstown Ohio. This show will open July 11, with a reception from 3-5 pm.

I learned a few things during the preparation for the Eastern Canada Pastel Society show that I wil share with you:

#1 - if you send work to Canada, do not call it personal. It should be sent as gallery to gallery.

       Why? Because I didn't and at the other end the recipient was charged $200 when the package arrived to cover the cost of  taxes and a UPS brokerage fee (almost $75.00)  for putting the package through customs. Of course, I have to pay him back. I can recover only about 1/3 of this expense by filing a form at UPS.

#2 - Do not use  UPS because they do charge this brokerage fee.

#3  You can't buy a prepaid return UPS label here in the USA for your work to be shipped back. Luckily I am going to the opening so I can buy one there and give that along with my $200 to the person who was kind enough to take care of all of this on his end.

 #4 I learned that Canadians are very nice and the French speaking ones  do not expect you to know how to speak French - they appreicate it if you try though.  A UPS employee in Canada spent much more time checking this out for me than the one here did - otherwise I might have known all this BEFORE I sent the stuff!!!

But now I know - experience is sometimes the only way we learn.

This is really exciting for me!

I have had my work accepted into the Eastern Canada Pastel Society International juried show in Montreal.  OO la la

It's my first acceptance into a show outside of the US and as I stood reading the letter announcing my acceptance I could not believe my eyes - BOTH pieces that I entered were accepted. 

I just kept holding the letter and repeating TWO? TWO? TWO???  

You bet your butt I'm going to Montreal for the opening - or as they call it there the "vernissage". It is on November 6th and that's close enough to my anniversary for my husband and I to justify a little weekend trip and eat at Chez la Mere Michel as recommended by my long-time friend, Lauren, who lived in Montreal for a while. 

Here are the 2 pieces.

Everybody needs to blog?? That's what I hear..so here it goes.

This week was a no-painting week for me, but the previous week was an exercise in learning how to paint with oils as taught by a wonderful artist, Dee Beard Dean. It was a 4 day workshop in Greensboro, NC which started out pretty well. I really thought I was getting it - taking my time, thinking through what I was doing ...

 DAY 1 - Getting the gesture of the figure on the canvas. This seems pretty straight forward.

Day 2 - I choose to concentrate on the face so I will have less to deal with. I think this was wise - I finished and was feeling quite proud of myself. Even gave the painting a name - The Crimson Robe. I may go back and work it a little more, but someone needs to stop me at the right time - you know how that goes!

Day 3

Why not try the whole figure?  I did pretty well yesterday, didn't I? Even though this isn't finished I felt I had a pretty good start on painitng a delicate girl in a richly colored kimono holding an umbrella for sun protection, of course. There is no rain in a perfect painting. Then looking at it later, all I could see was a woman waiting in the rain for a man who was late and she was P------, well let's say "unhappy".

I think I can save this one.

Day 4. I now have a new definition for the term "Wipe-Out"  - for oil painters it means saving a canvas for a better day.

We all have the bad ones - just have be hopeful that I am granted another day to fix it.

Happy painting and/or enjoying art in life.