BRANDON — Local artist Norma Jean Rollet will be the featured artist at the Brandon Artists Guild Sept. 2-Nov. 3 with an opening reception on Friday, Sept. 4, from 5 to 7 p.m. Her platform, the exhilarating color and luminosity of soft pastels, has the purest form of color intensity. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry color pigments than that of any other process and is made with permanent pigments. Pastel paintings can endure unchanged for centuries and are not susceptible, as are paintings made with a fluid medium, to the cracking and discoloration that result from changes in the color, opacity or dimensions of the medium as it dries.
Combined with all the possibilities of soft pastel medium and the classical realist style of her art, Rollet’s work has the depth and atmosphere usually reserved for oil paintings with extensive color blending and glazing techniques. But, soft pastels are her passion, with plein air painting her preferred venue. She can be seen participating in many of the Vermont plein air events as well as set up on the side of the road creating her art. She uses as many as 20 layers of pastel crystals to produce her realistic and atmospheric painting, creating her signature luminosity in each finished piece.
Rollet’s work has appeared in numerous national juried shows including, in 2015, the Pastel Society of America “Enduring Brilliance,” the Degas Pastel Society 19th member exhibit and the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Code “For Pastels Only.” She has also won awards in the Vermont Pastel Society 2014 and 2015 juried exhibits.
No matter the location, Rollet says, she “loves to choreograph colors, shapes and values into classical representational art. With the exquisite Vermont landscape subject matter and ever-changing lighting the possibilities are endless.” And, she will always add, “Soli Deo Gloria.”