Visit my Studio on the Tulsa Art Studio Tour & Enjoy the Preview Exhibition at Circle Cinema

I'm thrilled to announce that I've been invited to be one of the 9 Tulsa artists featured in this year's Tulsa Art Studio Tour sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Artists Coalition!  I've been busy getting things ready for the tour as well as the Preview Exhibition being held at Circle Cinema that opens next week.  Here are the details:



Tulsa Art Studio Tour

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Tulsa Art Studio Tour opens the studio doors of Tulsa artists. Visitors get a glimpse into the creative process and see art in action. The next Tour will be April 9-10, 2011; noon-5 pm each day.

Artists
Michael Benton, wood
Kim Doner, illustration
Alan Frakes, painting
Mark Hawley, furniture
George Kountoupis, painting
Steven Rosser, painting and printmaking
Christine Sharp-Crowe, printmaking
Celeste Vaught, painting
May Yang, printmaking

Preview Exhibition
Get a preview of the art and artists on the Tour during this exhibition, on display March 3 - April 4 at the Circle Cinema gallery.
Opening Reception: March 10, 7-9 pm

Sponsorships are now available. Click here for more information.

"Sun Dance"

"Sun Dance", Pastel, 19 x 26"

Can you tell I'm ready for summer?  The winter cold, subdued colors and darker days tends to wear on a person you know.  But happily I have my pastels to brighten up my visions!

Creating "Sun Dance" called for a large piece of Dark Leaf Green Art Spectrum Colourfix paper.  It needed to be big you know to be more dramatic.  Like all the others in the "Summer Colors" series, these floral paintings are all about color, light, exuberance and joy.  Joy in the creation process and the results.  Hope you enjoy the view!

Ginger Jar with Clementines

"Ginger Jar with Clementines", Pastel, 10 x 8"

I've been wanting to do another progress demo for folks that follow my work.  So, this time I remembered to stop and take photos as I did this pastel painting.  Yes, some are a little crooked in the progression demo below - but hey, I was focusing on painting, not photography!

Anyway, I knew I wanted to paint this dark blue ginger jar again so that I could try out my new Terry Ludwig Intense Darks.  Oh, do I like them!  I don't like to use black in paintings, so these just fit the bill perfectly.  And this week I got the cutest little bitty Clementines at the store, so a bunch of them spilled nicely into this still life set up.

I also knew I wanted to use my little piece of chamois to blend the background.  I've found it works best on Ampersand Pastelbord - so I used an 8 x 10" grey-toned board for this painting.  It works so well to grab lots of pigment and allows me to rub in and remove pastels very nicely.

There's quite an ornate design on the ginger jar with birds and flowers.  I chose to simplify it somewhat as working this small with large pastels is challenging with so much fine detail.  So, suggesting the design was the plan here while mainly getting the shapes, darks and lights of things right.

I do like all the rounded shapes and have learned to soften edges to create the 3-dimensional form more clearly.  It was a fun painting to create...but then that's true most of the time I get to be at the easel!


Gif animators

"Dreaming of Summer" - SOLD

"Dreaming of Summer", Pastel, 12 x 9"

Having just been through what's being called a "historic" set of snow storms and setting records for amount of snowfall as well as record cold temperatures, this week's highs in the 70s are a welcome reprieve!  And now to see most of the snow gone is just wonderful.  I think we're all ready for Spring and Summer to enjoy the warm sunshine and flowers.

So, here's a little pastel I did today fittingly titled "Dreaming of Summer".  It's my "flower arranging" for the day!

Yellow Trees Near Arroyo Seco

"Yellow Trees Near Arroyo Seco", Pastel, 8 x 10"

It's quite a site to see vibrant yellow trees in the dead of winter.  The sun shining brightly casting long shadows across the snow a road and the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the back was a marvelous site.

This little pastel painting was done on Wallis Museum Grade Sanded Paper with mostly Mount Vision Landscape pastels - wonderful hand-rolled pastels with just the kind of texture I like to let me load up the surface with lots of pigment.

As I was painting this in my studio from one of my photos, I tried to paint it as if I was doing so en plein air - fresh and spontaneous with not too much fussing.

New "Taos" Series Pastels Framed & Now Available

I'm happy to share that several of my "Taos" series pastel paintings have now been matted and framed and are available for purchase.  Being pastel, they're behind glass and so the snapshots in this post of the framed pieces are just to show you the mat colors and frame style - not for the true reflection of the artwork.  You can see the unframed artwork and the online purchase information on my website:  celestevaught.com. 

"Dusk in Taos", 9 x 12"

"Leaving Ghost Ranch", 8 x 20"

"QuerenciaTaos", 8 x 10"

"Sunset at Ghost Ranch", 8 x 10"

"Sunset Fence", 11 x 14"

"Taos Winter Field", 12 x 9"

"Near Santa Fe"

"Near Santa Fe", Pastel, 8 x 20"

The drive from Taos to Santa Fe is breathtaking.  I don't know what these mountains are called, but they were quite different from some of the others we saw.  Quite lovely.  I also enjoy how the landscape in New Mexico has such interesting repeating patterns with the undulating hills dotted with bushes.  That's the kind of landscape I find so enjoyable as an artist.

It was a sunny day when we drove to Santa Fe and I liked how these mountains in the distance were soft and hazy.  I thought it would be fun to try to capture that effect with a high key palette.  Naturally a long narrow format suited this vista.

If anyone who sees this can tell me the name of these mountains, I'd sure like to know!

"Sunset Fence" - SOLD

"Sunset Fence", Pastel, 11 x 14"

Another one of the many wonderful sunsets we enjoyed in Taos.  This one features the ubiquitous stick fences silhouetted in that glorious winter sunset.


Done in a variety of soft pastels, the task here with this light was to neutralize the shadowed foreground in contrast with that blazing sunset, but still get the values right.  I did this painting on Ampersand Pastelbord in Sand.  Nice surface on which to work.

"Dusk in Taos"

"Dusk in Taos" Pastel, 9 x 12"

"Quick!" I said, "Let me out of the car...I've got to get a picture of the red mountains!"  By the time I got through the gate at QuerenciaTaos, ran through the entrance and got my camera in position, the red was gone - the sun had slipped under the mountains behind me and I caught just a glimpse of the crimson glow on the very tips of the distant mountains.  But, with the remnants of the light, there seemed to be a pinkness to the light and I ended up liking the foreground & middle ground features in that light as much as the mountains.

I used a deep purple pumice-prepped paper for this pastel painting.  It was fun to exaggerate the colors in this - particularly the swath of brilliant blues and purples for those mountains.  I like the contrast between them and the little bits of rusty stones and dirt we see here in there in this terrain.  Of course the snow creates another textural contrast.

Querencia Taos

"Querencia Taos", Pastel, 7 x 10"

 This is the front of the lovely Querencia Taos - the name of the home we stayed in while visiting Taos.  Really, it's more like a compound - this end is the owners' residence, the middle is the guest house and the far end the caretakers.  It's situated atop a hill overlooking rolling hills all around with other homes sprinkled here and there.  In the distance are the Sangre De Cristo Mountains - the South end of the Rocky Mountains.  This place is an artist's paradise.

For more details of how you can stay at Querencia Taos, see this info page.

This late, winter afternoon shot was full of details that I liked - the intense blue sky, the stark shadows casting nice geometric forms on the simple light facade.  But one detail that we saw repeatedly in Taos were the fences and enclosures made from tree branches - we think birch in this case.  What a lovely textural contrast they provide, don't you think?

"Leaving Ghost Ranch"

"Leaving Ghost Ranch", Pastel, 8 x 20"

As we departed Ghost Ranch, the sun was nearly down when we saw this lovely expanse stretched before us.  I believe that's Pedernal in the background - a favorite of Georgia O'Keefe's to paint.  I wish we had had at least a map or guide with us to know what we were seeing.  But we just looked with eyes of wonder at all the colors and shapes around us - a true artist's paradise!

"Sunset at Ghost Ranch"

"Sunset at Ghost Ranch", Pastel, 10 x 10"

Visiting Ghost Ranch in New Mexico (where Georgia O'Keefe used to live & paint) was quite a site.  We ventured up into the park late one afternoon and enjoyed watching the sunset and colors painted across all the beautiful rock formations and cliffs.  I think this is called Kitchen Mesa in the background - but perhaps someone can confirm or correct that.  There was no one around to ask, so we just enjoyed the scenery and then made our way back to Taos after dark.

I think this might have been a spectacular time to see this place with the snow blanketing the ground, it made for the perfect "canvas" for the long shadows.  What a contrast between the blazing yellow, orange and reds of the mountains/rocks in the background.

I chose pastels to portray this scene so as to use vivid, intense pigments and the energy that I felt in this setting.  I started with mustard yellow, archival card stock coated with pumice medium for the grit to grab hold of layers of pastels.

The painting will be for sale, once it's matted and framed.  For inquiries, you can send me an email.

I believe it will look best cropped & matted to 8 x 10", with 11 x 14" frame such as below:

"Taos Winter Field"

"Taos Winter Field", Pastel, 12 x 9", Matted & Framed

When I saw all the vibrant colors in Taos, even in the winter, I knew that some of the pieces in the series would need to be done with pastels.  We drove along the main drag in Taos and saw that band of red grasses in the distance and pulled over to snap some photos.  Glad we did.  I loved this view!

Here's a shot of the painting matted and framed (a little dark as this photo was taken in late afternoon).

One of the things I remember about Taos that I liked, besides the lovely colors, even in the dead of winter, were all the interesting textures.  This scene exemplifies what I enjoyed there.