FRANCOIS BEAUDRY — PASTEL and WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS

Mr. Beaudry practiced both these techniques in parallel as a hobbyist and during his early years as a professional artist. Those techniques are quite straightforward but possess opposite characteristics. The watercolor is liquid and is worked from light to dark; the pastel (soft) is solid and is worked from dark to light. This opposition forces the artist to bring different solution to a same problem.

Those two techniques are done on paper but for pastel the best is sandpaper. This abrasive surface holds the pastel well, each stroke stand out, good for several layers unlike non-abrasive paper that quickly becomes saturated, and, ultimate quality, requires no fixative. With Beaudry, over time, the two techniques merged into a single mixed technique where the abrasive surface is a panel coated with a mixture of rabbit skin glue and corborundum or sandpaper (Wallis).

But besides these technical considerations, the pastel occupies a special space in his mind. Indeed, in 1982, at a pastel portrait workshop held in Woodstock, NY, the mythical place of the hippie generation, under the direction of the painter Albert Handell, his vision shifted and reached another plateau. He had come to learn about portraiture and he came out with a new visual sensibility. He owes this to Albert Handell. A year after this unexpected event, he became a professional painter.