Claude CARVIN : June 22 - 27, 2008

Dry pastel : the emotional landscape

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Pastel is perfectly suited for landscape painting and I will show you how to use it vigourously and fearlessly. You will learn how to choose the subject by analyzing what speaks to our emotions. A few fast charcoal sketches will help you to apprehend the essential features of the subject and to put it together using the usual rules of composition. Later, in the course of a more elaborate pastel work but keeping in mind spontaneity and lightness, we will pay a special attention to balance between shapes, values, light and colors. To me, art is not an intellectual concept but a mastered technique that I use to describe my feelings and the beauty of nature. I'm always in quest of moments when I feel being wholeheartedly part of nature itself and, in such moments, pastel allows me to describe them using its special features : softness, velvet-like smoothness, shimmering colors and texture. In order to keep the brisk feature of the strokes I use "Pastel Card" paper without stumping.

In love with Ardeche since his childhood, Claude Carvin paints in colorful tones the mysterious and sometimes wild nature of rivers, fields and cottages of this part of the country. Rivers, with their romantic and moving nature, provide the main part of his inspiration. In his rivers of Ardeche, the subtlety and richness of colors is an invitation to follow in mind the flow of water. "Rivers and me, it's a love story" he says.

Born in Marseille and trained at the Fine Arts Academy of Aix-en-Provence from 1972 to 1976, Claude Carvin exhibits his pastels every year at the International Pastel Festival in Feytiat and in Paris. He exhibits regularly in the art galleries of south of France where he is a guest of honor and where he won many awards and prizes. Bibliography : Artistes Magazine n°123, Sept.-Oct. 2006, p.48-49 and Hors-Serie 2006, Pratique des Arts n°75 July-Sept. 2007 p. 76-79.