BACKGROUND

Personal BACKGROUND

I was born in Syracuse NY in 1930 and graduated Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree in1954, after having worked in the university research labs for three years. We moved to Saugerties and I started work for IBM in 1955 and retired in 1987 at the age of 56 years.
I had started drawing and doing various art projects when I was about 10 years old, since my mother painted and encouraged me. By the time I finished high school I had decided to study art at the university, but since I had acquired a taste for food I decided to switch to engineering.
I received an oil set for my birthday in 1968 and I painted with oils for the next 10 years. I started using watercolors in 1980, and experimented with various techniques for the next few years. Between 1985 and 1990 I studied well over 100 books and many video tapes regarding watercolor and many aspects of painting and composition.
After my retirement from IBM in 1987 , I spent full time painting and took a workshop with Tom Lynch in 1987 and another workshop with Tony Couch in 1988. Due to other commitments after 1991 I stopped painting full time and merely experimented with several different techniques until 2000; when I found that my old technique was the only one that worked for me. Most of 2000 was spent researching the tools and methods for making archival prints of paintings.
In early 2001 I established my web site www.brucefelton.com and included several of my paintings as well as advertising 8.5X11 and 13X19 archival prints ( 200+ year life ) .
The bottom line is that as an artist I am essentially self taught with the exception of the brief help from Tom and Tony.

Pastel BACKGROUND

On June 11 2005, Kenko was having a kayak paddlefest on the Hudson. On the way there I stopped at Elizabeth Mowry’s studio since she was planning to relocate and was having a studio sale. While there I bought a book she had written and published in 1994. The book “paint the Changing Seasons in Pastel” was very well written and provided instruction and considerable insight into the use of pastels. I was fascinated by the pastel process, so a few days later I ordered a set of 80 half sticks Sennelier soft pastels, a set of 72 hard Nupasles, a set of 60 Stabilo CarbOthello pastel pencils and some assorted pastel paper. In the next two weeks I painted 8 pastels ( P-1 thru P-8 in Pastel Gallery A ) and found that I needed many more pastel sticks since I could not mix them the way I always have done with Watercolor. A great change for me was that I could virtually smear dark over the paper and come back later and add highlights, as opposed to Watercolor where I had to plan ahead and reserve space for my highlights and whites. In July I ordered the largest set ( 525 colors ) of Sennelier soft pastels and several more kinds of pastel paper and board.
The pastel paintings are numbered in sequence P-1 to P-n and are included in the Pastel Galleries A thru C. They are on several different kinds of paper, which is explained under the enlarged photo of each. No attempt has been made to sort out the stinkers and only show the best since this helps to see the real initial learning experience.

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