15 Sep Telluride Gallery of Fine Art: Sally Strand
Colored chalk has been used for thousands of years.
Prehistoric cave painting in southern France, Spain, and South Africa show that early man worked with red, white, and ochre earth pigments and burnt bone when creating these earliest color paintings.
A work made by one Italian master in the 16th century in which Guid Reni used a variety of colored chalks still survives, a rare thing because, for centuries, pastels were used only for preliminary studies and can be an impermanent medium.
Neighbor’s Backyard, Sally Strand
Fast forward to the 19th century, when a a group of renegade artists collectively known as the Impressionists changed the course of art history in a number of significant ways. One of the group, Edward Degas, put pastel art on the map. Before Degas, the word “pastel” was synonymous with with effete color. Collectors did not take the medium seriously.
Sally Strand is one of a number of high profile pastel artists in the stable of Telluride Gallery of Fine Arts, a list which also includes Bruce Gomez, Doug Dawson, Carole Katchen, and Deborah Bay.
Plums with White Cup, Strand
Brandishing her colored sticks, Strand loves to tease the magic out of everyday objects and ordinary places and situations: train stations, restaurants, pears, a bowl of flowers, eggs, an unmade bed. The quotidian then becomes a placeholder for Strand’s real subject: catching the light as it changes from moment to moment.
Although her work is representational, Strand is anything but a strict realist. Look closely at her color choices: her palette is there to create a mood, rather than depict what is actually in front of our eyes. In a very real sense, Strand helps her viewer see rather than simply look.
Pillows, Strand
Strand once told Telluride Inside…and Out: “Success to me is when you can take an ordinary head of lettuce and cause someone to give it a second glance.”
Sally Strand is recognized by the Pastel Society of America as a Master Pastelist and a member of its Hall of Fame. After years of producing major work and being honored for her artistic accomplishments, she returned to college to earn an MFA in oil painting – 40 years after her first degree.
Lose No Time, Strand
The show at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art highlights Strand’s extraordinary pastels as well as her new work in oil.
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