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You fall in love with a beautiful painting at an exhibition, or in the artist’s studio – you simply must have it! You take it home, you consider carefully where to hang it, and hammer the nail into the wall. When you spend time in that room, you look at the painting with pleasure, feeling the joy of being in love with this gorgeous find.

After some time has passed, the joy and thrill tapers out. You can sit in the room without even glancing at the painting that used to be so enchanting. Eventually, you don’t even notice the painting anymore, as it becomes part of the furniture.

You have fallen out of love.

Or, have you, really? What if there is something else going on?

The brain is a funny old thing. While it is constantly active, it edits out what is always there. It is like it says: “Yes, all the furniture in the room is still there, and I don’t even have to register how they look, I have this nice simplified memory image stored, I’ll just save energy by using that instead of looking.”  You literally do not see the painting anymore.

The brain immediately notices changes, though. “Who put the garden tools on the dining table, dragging in all that dirt!?”

What if you outsmarted your brain (!) and deliberately caused that change which will make it sit up and take notice? What if you changed paintings, or changed which wall or room they hang out in? Yes, you are right – you would suddenly start to see the artworks again, rediscover how beautiful they are, and feel the joy anew! This effect lasts up to three months, and you can rekindle it by rotating your paintings, or have some stored away and change the display regularly.

And be gloriously in love again.

Edward Munch's pastel version of The Scream has just been auctioned at Sotheby's for the tidy sum of  $120 million. OK, it is fairly large, 3 2" x 23.25" (81  x 59 cm), but as one critic put it "it is only a bit of pastel on a board".

Only?

Now, what then is the version made in oil and tempera? It is only a bit of pigment diluted with oil and eggs onna board. After all.

We all know why a pastel painting sells for that ridiculous sum -- it is the name, the brand, of Munch, and it is art as investment. (Or lottery, as the gamble is that it will sell for even more next time. It may, and then it may not.)

This sale is absolutely delightful for us pastel painters!  12 000 000 green bits of paper's worth of taking the medium seriously. The most expensive artwork sold. Wow!

No, dear critic, it is not "only" pastel. The pastels look like crayons, but are in reality almost pure pigment. I like to call them Pigment Ingots. Check the price of a high quality handmade stick of pastel, and you'll see why.

These pigments applied to materials that will withstand the ravages of time will stay fresh and bright, while oilpaint yellows and cracks. Pastels are a painting medium, as well as a drawing medium. (But so is any other medium.)  The Munch isn't sold as a 'drawing'.

There are so many accomplished pastel artists all over the world. They know the worth of the medium, and now the rest of the world knows it too.

If you are looking for investing in a beautiful work of art which will look as fresh in 500 years as it does the day the artist takes it off the ease, then get pastel paintings. You are welcome to browse my pastel paintings, which can be yours.

And who knows, one day you'll sell the one you get for... well... let's be modest now -- say about $ 150 million!

Suddenly, that is a possibility, thanks to Munch!

This was great fun to paint, and it is part of a series of game paintings I'm involved in. I've completed Chess, and now Backgammon. I briefly considered checkers, but no, the checkerboard in perspective... well, I had had enough of it for a good while. Now I know that a backgammon board is much more difficult, with the long tongue pattern in perspective... Live, try things out, and learn, take on challenges, right! It keeps life interesting.

The Venetian masks are based on typical template masks, with my own decoration on them. In this painting, I really focus on creating shimmering glowing colour. Pastels are a very versatile medium, which allows the artist to layer even complementary colours without creating the proverbial "mud". Not that there exists such a thing, "mud" are lovely neutral colours, which do a great job in the right place in the right painting.

This is not such a painting.

This is a colour feast, with exuberant singing high-chroma pigments. However, no major mass in the paintings is un-mixed colour. Every colours is created by layering strokes, laying them down overlapping and adjacent, weaving the pigments as if they were photons of light. (By the way, is light a particle waiving, or a wave being particular?) In fact, there are greys in the painting, particularly (!) in the "skin tone" of the mask in profile, but they are optical greys, created by the prismatic colours I always use.

Two close-up details show the weaving of pigment. The camera can't capture how smoothly the colours transition into each other (as a colletor and friend said, "your paintings are beautiful online, but a thousand times more beautiful in real life"). But this inability in the camera reveals the strokes, and that is very usable when I want to show that aspect.

The grey, white-in-shadow, of the profile mask is made out of many colours, including warm peaches.

Above is a close-up detail of the corner of the fan. The warm reds are tempered by strokes of olive green, and so is the intense cobalt blues of the hat, which also got some violets. There is a little bit of background showing at bottom left corner, and the yellows are tempered by pinks and violets.

As with Chess, there is a story in the painting, a hidden-in-plain-sight one. With Chess, I asked the readers to share their interpretations in the blog post "Do we communicate, you and I?", and I'd love for you to do it here too!

Both paintings are going to be exhibited soon, on the 18th of May, and I will print ut the stories for the audience to read.

I'll reveal one thing about the Backgammon: The actual game on the board. It sure looks like red (the coquettishly smiling blue lady) has no reason to look so happy this close to the end of the game. While I reasearched backgammon rules (I did learn it a few decades ago, but have not played much), I came across a text by Ed Collins called A Sweet (and Miraculous) Backgammon Win (actually, they are two such wins). In this very situation I have painted, he threw a double one, and eventually managed to win the whole game, against the odds. I found this so charming I used that point in the game for my pastel painting.

Click on the link to see a larger version of Backgammon.

Vernissage

Fredag 18 maj kl 18⁰⁰ – 20³⁰

”Fantastiska färger”

Charlotte Herczfeld och Elisabeth Blass

I ­­Domkyrkosalen,  Folkungagatan 46, T-bana Medborgarplatsen

Utställningen visas även söndagarna 20 & 27 maj 2012 kl 10-15:30

Elisabeth och jag är båda medlemmar i Pastel Guild of Europe, en förening för europeiska pastellmålare, och båda bor i Stockholmstrakten. Så vi har slagit oss ihop, och har en gemensam utställning. Båda tycker mycket om färg, och vi målar med olika stilar som kompletterar varandra bra.

Varmt välkommen!