The Pastel Society – Member of the Federation of British Artists
For more information about the Federation of British Artists please view the promotional video:
https://youtu.be/IAyqHNAlfMM
To View The Magic of Pastel
To View ‘In Conversation with Carole Hubscher CEO of Caran d’Ache’
FBA Fundraiser – FBA Editions
Prints for a Cause
Limited Edition Prints from the Federation of British Artists
To view the full range of prints available:
https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/exhibitions-events/fundraiser-fba-editions
Pastel Society Members Tanya Avchinnikova and Ian Rawling are featured.
THE ReMARK April 2026
Dear Friend, Member and Pastellist,
The changing of the clocks has thrown me and that is my only and poor excuse for this belated ReMark. A lot continues behind the news, posts, stories and tweets, whether individually or as a society and remains a constant balancing act between our love for creativity and the need to share and inform.
Anyway, when my mind finally turned to April, I kept coming back to the role of the website in this day and age with more and more talk about AI and the various other digital platforms. Between you and me dear reader, I suspect we are a small contingency who go to a website as against the likes of Instagram. Both Sarah Bee and now Michele Ashby have been responsible for successfully encouraging growing numbers to this platform, whilst Janine Baldwin promotes our Bluesky presence.
There are differing thoughts as to the relevance of websites in this day and age. With all the alternatives available, it is so much easier to search and find the information that we require whilst getting our messages out to the masses. It is no longer the privilege of the few but given the right circumstances, is now the right of everyone who wishes to participate. But, organisations, especially at a national level, may no longer need, function or be able to afford one headquarters within a physical context. Our website is our HQ, albeit digital. In fact, we have never had our own physical HQ. I like to think we were ahead of our time! But our national annual exhibition will remain London centric whilst our society is not. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the initial meetings held to form the society. How much emphasis was put on London based artists? Some national societies still emphasise the importance of this! But this is why our website is so important, providing a central point of contact for The Pastel Society within the UK and indeed the world.
In the life of our society, our website is relatively very young but thanks to Cheryl Culver and our website designer, it is developing slowly. Once again, there is a need to balance between what is possible and what time and money is available. It should hopefully embrace constant change, open discussion, decision making and be a guide. There is already so much available on the WWW, but not all is helpful. The society was formed to showcase the best in contemporary pastel, particularly in the UK and now includes all dry media. That is at the core of our mandate. We are also the guardians of past accomplishments, present opportunities and the future possibilities of pastel and dry media. Thanks to our current President, we have now instigated a way of ensuring that past accomplishments are now digitally archived. We are now endeavouring to address the present and future and ensure that it is flexible and usable to hand on to future generations.
We therefore call on all members, Friends and interested parties to contribute thoughts and ideas to developing a ‘one stop shop’ approach to giving every individual a starting point for more information and less noise. Adopting for once some fashionable rhetoric, ‘a useful guide’ and avoiding ‘fake news.’ How about sending a short link to interesting articles you have read? Your own article? Exhibitions?
It is a disappointment that we have not received much in the way of work in pastel or dry media from Friends and non-members to accompany this editorial. But we thank both Valentino Lucera from Chile and Claudia Parentela in Italy for making contact. Valentino is self-taught in soft pastel and inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. Claudia uses mixed media.
Good painting. Simon B. Hodges VPPS
info.thepastelsociety@gmail.com
By Valentino Lucera
By Claudia Parentela
Featured artist
Barry Lowenhoff PS
Artist’s Statement:
I am most attracted to landscape subjects from rural East Anglia, Wales, Scotland and Southern Ireland which I execute in a figurative way. The scenes I choose often speak to me as containing directional forces of energy which I interpret via relatively large, gestural brush strokes which I lay down first (liquid charcoal and watercolour). Whilst seemingly unnecessary to the onlooker, these marks provide a structural dynamic which feeds my mark making process and wherever preserved, are allowed to counterbalance subsequent layers of finer drawing work in charcoal and pastel. Colour is often minimised in preference to bold, graphic, blacks, blues, browns, light greys and whites. I aim to create drama in my work.
