Deborah Bays / 파스텔화

           

Pas de Trois
Pastel, 12 X 18"
$2,500.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secrets
Pastel, 18 X 34"
$5,200.00

 

 

 

 

Daffodils with Sterling and Steel
Pastel, 12 X 12"
$1,900.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dime a Dance
Pastel, 14 X 36"
$4,500.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sprout With Handle
Pastel, 13 X 16"
$2,400.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cream Tea with Eggs
Pastel, 9 X 9"
$1,600.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lady Jane
Pastel, 15 X 18"
$2,800.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milk Pitcher with Sunflowers
Pastel, 12 X 18"
$2,600.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silver Service
Pastel, 18" X 24"
$4,200.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Red Shoes (Sold)
Pastel, 16" X 21", $3,200.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apples and Atmosphere (Sold)
Pastel, 16" X 24", $3,800.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milk Pitcher with Pears and Apple (Sold)
Pastel, 13.5" X 16", $2,400.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer's End (Sold)
Pastel, 24" X 36", $6,200.00

 

 

 

 

 

Deborah Bays

(*Adapted from an article by Deb Bays for the Pastel Journal) Deb Bays has lived her entire life in the world of the arts. She grew up in Nashville, Tennessee in a family of musicians. Her father played the French horn professionally and has a beautiful voice and moonlighted as a choral conductor and continued on to have a long and rewarding career as Chairman of two of the top ten music schools of the time, one at the University of Texas at Austin and the other at the University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana. Her mother played violin professionally and her sister studied cello and still plays. Classical music is a very big part of her life. As a child Bays studied violin and later viola. She had quite a struggle to play competently. She was surrounded by peers who were exceptional talents. It seemed at that point in her life that music would be my career. She continued to study viola very seriously in college and really enjoyed playing. In hindsight, Deb remarks that “it seems strange that it took me so long to become aware of my longing to engage in the visual arts”. She began to study sartorial history and worked a bit in the theater costume shop at Stephens College where she spent her freshman year. She fell in love with costume design and went on to accumulate two degrees in design for the theater, her BFA earned at the University of Texas at Austin and her MA from Purdue University. She has spent the last three decades as a costume designer for the theater. Among her credits are the Denver Center Theater Company, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Harrah's, Off Broadway and the Hong Kong Repertory Theater. Eventually she became frustrated with making art by committee. Her life was full of terrible deadlines, putting out fires in all directions, from directors that wanted the impossible, delivered yesterday, to dealing with the temperamental milliner who just couldn't understand her reasons for wishing a hat to look just so. For her own amusement she started attending non-instructed life drawing sessions at the Denver Art Student's League. Bays recalls, “Ah...peace. It felt like coming home. Even the smell of the oil paint and turpentine brought up deep memories”. Bays’ grandfather, Clarence Armour, her mother's father, was a self-taught landscape painter. Her first set of oil paints came from him and he became her first painting teacher. She loved to look at his paintings that adorned almost every wall in her grandparent's simple home. on the other side of the family, her father's brother, Joshua Bays, was a very gifted painter and art teacher. He was very good at portraiture and Deb can still recall a painting of a Kansas wheat field that hung in her Grandparents' home. She loved that painting. “I suppose all of this painting heritage just caught up with me in midlife. I began to study painting just for the joy of it ...and the challenge! I have never tackled anything so difficult or so rewarding. The rewards are those enigmatic understandings. I feel that I actually understand music and theater better for this study of painting. I'm not looking back! I spent about six years pursuing drawing and painting at the periphery of my life. I didn't give it much energy. I showed at the Denver Art Students League as well as the suburban shop that did my framing at the time. The owner is an artist and was very encouraging. one thing seemed to lead to another without my steerage. I began showing with Abend Gallery and painted my first one woman show in 2000. I will always be grateful for Christine Serr and her wonderful gallery for providing me with such an auspicious start. This keeps me focused upon my quest...to learn to paint...perhaps at times a quixotic quest at that. I do love it...and at times despair of it.” ”While it is only reasonable to desire that others like your work, the only person that I really need to please is myself. The only way that I can judge my work is by improvement. My quest is to paint better, to understand more today than I did yesterday”.

 

 

 

 

Yuriko Nakamura - Dear Green Field