Karen Margulis, “Desert Oasis,” Pastel on paper, 11 x 14 in.; Karen is represented by several galleries and is a Member of Excellence in the Southeastern Pastel Society and a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America.
Karen Margulis, “Desert Oasis,” Pastel on paper, 11 x 14 in.; Karen is represented by several galleries and is a Member of Excellence in the Southeastern Pastel Society and a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America.
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On painting with pastels > An article by Laura Vailati, art enthusiast and Plein Air Today contributor

Painting with Pastels: Art for the Sake of Wildflowers

“I love to paint flowers simply because I love flowers,” declared the artist Karen Margulis in her disarming simplicity.

It is lush nature, poetically expressed in the more general depiction of landscapes and more particularly in her amazing ability to render the beauty of wildflowers on paper, which is Karen’s favorite subject.

A sensitive artist devoted to painting with pastels, Karen has made simplification the key to the success of her compositions. A highly regarded pastel artist and teacher, Karen Margulis, in addition to having delighted attendees at the 11th Plein Air Convention and Expo (PACE), she was also among the faculty members of Pastel Live.

A frame from the rich and exciting Karen Margulis' PACE painting with pastels demonstration
A frame from the rich and exciting Karen Margulis’s PACE demonstration on painting with pastels. Learn Karen Margulis’s COMPLETE pastel painting process, plus the full walkthrough of her genius “M.A.P. Approach” in her art video workshop, “Expressive Pastel Painting.”
painting with pastels - Karen Margulis's palette and plein air tools and equipment.
Karen Margulis’s palette and plein air tools and equipment.

After working in a family daycare center for 21 years as an educator, she realized in 2005 that her children had grown up and she could resume her passion for art, which she had abandoned in her high school days.

“Fortunately, I discovered pastels and fell in love with them,” says the artist, who recognizes in the pastels the immediacy and vibrancy of this medium. “With pastels, I can leave a mark, it’s beautiful, it’s vibrant and it will never change over time.”

Karen Margulis, “Floral Fantasy Wildflowers,” Pastel, 11 x 14 in.
Karen Margulis, “Floral Fantasy Wildflowers,” Pastel, 11 x 14 in.

Meeting Marsha H. Savage – “really a guide for me,” as the artist said – and doing a workshop with Richard McKinley were revelatory for her and led her to accept the challenge of painting in plein air. It “was anything but easy because the light is changing so you have to only capture the essence of the scene.” Karen also declared to love the intimacy of plein air and the sounds of the pastels on the paper with which she moves with different marks and pressure.

According to Karen, plein air painting is essential to learn and see how things really are, because “what you see in nature is what really happens.”

Karen Margulis, “Contemporary Wildflowers Queen Annes Lace,” Pastel, 14 x 11 in.
Karen Margulis, “Contemporary Wildflowers – Queen Anne’s Lace,” Pastel, 14 x 11 in.

Her rendering of flowers is poetic, both when she makes flowers realistically and in a more abstract way. The latter approach is a style the artist began working on three years ago, experimenting with the almost abstract representation of the elements of nature. Elements that, while remaining clearly recognizable, are charged with a dreamlike and playful atmosphere and in which the use of rich colors in terms of chroma, values, and hue are counterbalanced by the softer colors of atmospheric perspective with which she creates the compositional pathos of the scene.

Be they red, white, or pink, Karen’s pastel wildflowers are mostly depicted in their natural environment, surrounded by their peers and submerged by herbaceous plants that adorn them, surround them, or soar skyward, individually to the point of making them the absolute protagonists of her paintings. It’s an effect that is also emphasized by the assumed point of view of the artist, who portrays her subjects with viewpoints and perspectives both, linear and aerial, to create the illusion of depth in the painting. It seems that the artist’s eye rises precisely from that silent micro-environment that coexists in the midst of the green undergrowth and that she recreates with single, vibrant touches of pastel or with a massed drafting of more or less full-bodied color spread with different pressure.

Karen Margulis, “Frozen in Time,” Pastel on paper, 9 x 12 in.
Karen Margulis, “Frozen in Time,” Pastel on paper, 9 x 12 in.

Technically, Karen likes to work on a small format while painting with pastels because as she said, in small size, “everything is whispering.” She usually works with a limited palette and begins the compositional process by choosing the subject. She then works with a simple values thumbnail based on three/four values of the same color family. She chooses pastels to represent the extremes in the subject, one pastel for the darkest dark, one for the lightest light, one for the most intense color, and the remaining middle values.

According to Karen, in order to make the picture more realistic and believable, it is necessary to follow some guidelines. Among these, there is the need to create variety in terms of sizes and spacing of shapes to create and reinforce areas of contrast within the painting, in order to establish the visual path toward which the viewer is stretched. Connection between earth and sky is equally important for the credibility of the painting and it is therefore necessary that there is continuity in terms of light direction and atmospheric conditions.

Karen Margulis's final study for the PACE 2024 demonstration - painting with pastels
Karen Margulis’s final study for the PACE 2024 demonstration

For all those who want to approach art through the pastel technique, Karen suggests finding time to experiment with new art materials while having fun and considering that “failure is part of each individual’s growth process.”


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