Sheila M. Evans

Well, here it is, the last day of 2008. It’s been an amazing year for me, and as I gear up for 2009, I’m thinking of where I’ve been. 2008 started on  a high note: in January I was accepted to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. This is one of the most competitive shows out there, so I was thrilled to be included. Acceptances kept coming in and I ended up with exactly the show schedule I wanted, which was huge for me. There are no guarantees in this business. There is so much competition. You can’t be certain you will have opportunities to show and sell, nor can you be certain you will make sales when opportunity comes. 

Despite looming economic troubles, I was fortunate to have some very good shows this year. All of them were good, actually, but a few stood out. Bellevue, Wash. and Sun Valley, Idaho were incredible in 2008. Thanks to all of you who gave me so much support–you know who you are. And here in Spokane, an amazing group of artists and art professionals have reached out to me, and for that I am also grateful. Thanks to all the artists and show staff that made all that work so much fun. And a special thanks to my husband and family for their unending patience and support.

2009 is mostly a mystery at this point. It will be months before I know my schedule. But I can look forward to a few good things now. Sun Valley is already on my calendar thanks to a “best of” category award this year. And, two of my pieces will be published in the Pastel Journal‘s April Pastel 100 issue. If I ever get over this awful cold I should be able to finish my fifty oils with no trouble, and if any shows will have them, I will have the excitement of presenting a new medium. But beyond that…?

Que será será, and Happy New Year!

I love the holidays, really I do. It used to be that I would become depressed as we went into January and it would be winter for another four months (it stays late here) but all the celebrating was over. Now things are a bit different. The celebrations are still fun and when it’s all over, it’s a little difficult to snap out of it and move on.

But January and February are some of the most productive studio months. And it feels good to get my life back and start working again. I’m not quite there yet. There’s still a holiday to go and I have a cold, so I’m not quite feeling the anticipated burst of motivation yet. But it’s on its way, I can feel it. So soon there should be a lot of new work to post. Stay tuned.

A few weeks ago I decided to apply to the Oil Painters of America. This is a group similar to the pastel societies to which I currently belong. These societies put on several group shows per year, usually some regional and one national or international. They also hold meetings, have resources available for members, etc. And, they have different membership levels for members depending on certain criteria. These usually include some variation of associate, signature, and master, with different criteria for achieving these levels. In most societies all newly accepted applicants begin as associates. Some societies allow anyone to join and others have juried entry. Once accepted as associates, members usually have to achieve some milestone such as jurying into three national exhibits to achieve signature status, which allows the artist to use the society’s initials after their name in their signature as well as in their official correspondence. One exception to this is Pastel Society of America, which can bestow signature status on a new applicant if they feel the work is up to a certain standard. I got lucky and chose my slides well when I entered PSA. They were kind enough to give me signature status when I applied, which shocked me, in a good way. Thus, the PSA after my name on pastels. But since I just started oil painting again, I thought I would try to “catch up” in that medium. So I entered two images, including Thunderhead No.4, above. And today, I got my reply from the Oil Painters of America: I’m in. This group requires acceptance into at least three national shows, or some other combination of criteria, for their signature membership. So I have some work to do. But hopefully in a few years I will have an OPA to go with my PSA. OPA! It sounds so festive. Pass the ouzo.

It’s that time of year when those of us who prefer art fairs as our sales venue must begin applying for our jobs. Most art fairs out there are juried. All the fairs I do are. This means that in order to participate, artists must typically submit 4-5 images of their work, plus a photo of their display (tent, walls, etc. set up with a sampling of their work). Most shows require that artists submit separate entries for each medium–pastels, oils, etc. And, each entry typically costs from $10 to $50. I can’t think of too many other professions where business owners have to pay repeatedly to apply for their job. Well, I actually can’t think of any, but I’m sure they are out there. But there are advantages to this system for artists. The better-juried a show is, the better its reputation becomes, and ultimately the more art buyers it attracts. This is essential to those of us who cannot price our work in the impulse-buy range. Also, the jury process not only guarantees (usually) a certain quality level, it also (generally) ensures a balanced show. So if you are a jeweler, you won’t have to compete with fifty other jewelers but only one or two painters. Obviously none of this helps if you do not get in to a show, but for those who make the cut, there are benefits. So, I try to think of jury fees as a form of union dues.

Jurying is always nerve-wracking, if a little exciting. Did I pick the killer set of images? Will I get to go to this show or that show? This leads to a lot of second-guessing and obsessive mail checking on notification days. While nothing will probably ever change that aspect of jurying, there have been improvements in the jury system in the last few years. Depending who you ask, anyway. Read more

Warming is both the title of this new small piece, and what I wish was happening here. It was seven degrees (Fahrenheit) earlier this morning and probably hasn’t gotten much better, although it is nice and sunny. The painting, another oil, is one of the tiny canvas panel pieces I promised last week and didn’t manage to post. The colors look so tropical and festive. Perfect for a day like this! Today I am starting on pretty much the opposite of this piece, a 48″ x 28″ canvas. This seems more than usually daunting to me right now, probably because the holidays are approaching quickly and I have been working small for the past several weeks. Perhaps that is why I am typing and not painting. Time to get to work.

Anyone familiar with my work who has found my new site is probably wondering what is going on. I’ve shown pastels almost exclusively for the past several years, especially at art fairs where you must jury in separately for each medium. A lot of visitors to my previous site found me through the Pastel Journal or the Dakota Art Pastels Catalogue. And here I am writing post after post about oil painting and oil painting accessories.

Of course, I am still working and showing in pastel. My big push to paint oils lately stems from the need to have a body of work done and dry in time to varnish and show in the spring. I’ve found most of my work in oil needs a few months of drying time before I can safely apply varnish. Pastels, on the other hand, are a bit more forgiving in a time crunch. I can photograph and frame a pastel on the same day I finish it, if necessary. Therefore, I am pushing back my pastel work until my oils are painted. But I did take a break recently to paint a large pastel which I needed to balance out my show entries for the coming season. So, today I thought I would change things up and post this new pastel work, Smoke Signal No.2. The image may look a bit familiar. I have worked with this particularly dramatic leaf before, in a small pastel study which became a large oil. For this piece I revisited it with a more complex composition and more emphasis on smoky blue-greens vs. red. It was fun to switch back to pastel for a few days, and I am looking forward to doing so again as I come nearer to completion of my winter oil painting project.

From time to time I’d like to share information about equipment that I particularly like. There’s nothing like having the right tool for the job. It just makes working that much more pleasant and rewarding.
When I started painting in oils again, I had a pretty good collection of brushes left over from my college days. But as I got into it a bit, I discovered that there were a few sizes I was missing, and that some of my brushes were getting a bit past their useful prime. Not a difficult problem to solve, right? Except for one thing. As of about a year ago, I am a vegetarian. To keep consistent, I also don’t buy leather or other animal products like squirrel-hair brushes. And I realized, as I looked at my collection of paint brushes, that the only ones I ever used were the natural-hair sort. I had some synthetic brushes but found them almost impossible to work with. They were too soft and just generally not responsive to the way I paint. I had to come up with a solution. My natural response to the realization that I must replace some item with a “vegetarian” version is to go on a research and spending spree. (I did this to excess with my favorite weakness, shoes, and found some wonderful resources like MooShoes and Bourgeois Boheme.) 

For the brushes, I didn’t have to look far. An online search led me to the Escoda Tadami Synthetic Mongoose Long Handle Brush. I ordered one (I found mine at Dick Blick) and fell in love. Not only are these brushes far superior to any synthetic that I have used, they are now my favorite brushes, period. As you can see in the photo below, I have started a small collection.  They are not cheap, but they are worth it, so I add a few sizes whenever I buy supplies. Highly recommended!

Some paintings fight you every step of the way. Others seem to want to be painted. This new piece, Springstorm, seemed determined to appear on its canvas almost in spite of me. I was feeling low on energy when I started, and a bit, well, not confident. The colors were slightly outside my normal palette, and I wasn’t completely sure how to approach the painting. And none of it mattered. I don’t know why this happens, but it does from time to time for most, if not all, artists. And we love it when it does happen, because that is when we end up with our freshest works. The experience is completely enjoyable. Paint seems to mix itself, then flows easily onto the canvas. We work without thinking. This phenomenon of painting without thought is probably the closest I ever get to being fully present in the moment. A yoga teacher once asked me if painting was like meditation. Yes, sometimes it really is.