Impressionist Landscape - A Sad Story -

For the last two months I have been looking forward to a weekend workshop entitled "Painting the Impressionistic Landscape in Pastel" at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa -My friend Rosemary signed up with me and came down from Chicago for the class-

We made reservations at the Marriott for Saturday night - we packed our supplies our clothes and got up at 5:00 am on a Saturday so that we could arrive on time- we were 15 minutes early but the building was locked I rang the bell and a guard came from the museum and checked to see who I was & what I wanted - I told her we were here for the class and she called in to check and see if we were in the right place - we were - she was surprised no one else was there but said maybe people were running late -


We waited and still no one came - to make a very long story short - There was no workshop!!! - it was still on the museum's website and the artist's website and they took our money - but somehow - there was no class - I cannot say how disappointed I was - The people at the museum were very nice and very apologetic but - there was no workshop -!!!!!!---- ????? We made the best of a huge disappointment and spent the morning at the museum - it is fabulous - lots of Remingtons, Morans, Caitlins, and even a newly acquired Georgia O'keefe - it is an outstanding collection of paintings, bronzes and artifacts - definitely a world class collection - and then we went to a local street fair with art - not so great but interesting -



Arena had invited us to have dinner at her house - Heath and Noah came too - and we had a wonderful meal Boeuf Bourguignon a La Julia Child and panna cotta with raspberries for desert - Arena is a wonderful hostess and cook we enjoyed our evening-



So... on Sunday Rosemary and I held our own little Impressionist workshop and these two pastel sketches are the results of my efforts to create an impressionist landscape in pastel - both are 6" by 9.5" on hahnemuhle paper- it is a very soft paper and has a velour like texture the top sketch is from a photograph I took at Darlene's house the lower sketch is a copy of a Richard McDaniel Landscape