"Impressions in Soft Pastel: Exploring Our Landscapes" by Inge Ivens

"Impressions in Soft Pastel: Exploring Our Landscapes” by Inge Ivens

Showing at the Nevada City Winery Galley Thursday, November 21st, 2024 through Sunday, January 19th, 2025

About the Show

Artist Inge Ivens’ “Impressions in Soft Pastel: Exploring Our Landscapes”, speaks in a gentle voice. This series of landscapes and waterscapes emphasizes not only nature’s rich textural contrasts and diversity but also brings attention to how beautifully an artist can deftly utilize the medium of soft pastels. In Ivens’ capable hands, her blending of color and contrasting tones seamlessly captures the reflective qualities of light and water.

Ivens connection to her scenes are clear and heartfelt.

With details as simple as a twig sticking out of shallow water, one single white puff of a flower or bits of dirt dotting the snow, she gives the entire scene a sense of wholeness.

A bare tree, which one might interpret as forlorn or ‘background’ is so strongly rendered, defined and placed, it rightfully takes center stage as the main character and carries Ivens’ story perfectly. “Impressions in Soft Pastels: Exploring Our Landscapes” gives us within its quiet voice a time to pause and appreciate detail and wholeness throughout nature.

Artist Statement

Artist Inge Ivens talks about her show “Impressions in Soft Pastels: Exploring Our Landscapes” at the Nevada City Winery Gallery.

I believe creating art is a way of communicating as humans have expressed themselves in paintings, music, and other artistic ways for thousands of years. In my landscape paintings, as seen in “Impressions in Soft Pastels Exploring Our Landscape”, I tell stories with colorful pastels and show thoughts and feelings that words cannot express.

As a child, I always loved drawing with pencils and crayons. My grandfather thought a career as an artist would be great for me. However, my father was more in favor of my pursuing a science profession. I obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience and later a board certification as a toxicologist. Throughout my career as a toxicologist, I always attended art classes when time allowed.

I love the special feel and layering effects of pastel sticks. Watching a landscape emerge from plain paper is amazing and rewarding to me. I enjoy scouting the local landscape for memorable/paintable scenes. I tend to favor painting water, like reservoirs, rivers, puddles, and creeks.

About the Artist

Artist Inge Ivens started painting in pastel after retiring from a career as a scientist. She rediscovered her old Sennelier pastel sticks from a painting class and realized that painting was what she had always missed in her life.

Over the last four years, Inge has studied with several nationally recognized soft pastel landscape artists and she is a Pastel Society of America associate Pastelist. Her paintings have been accepted in shows by several pastel societies and paintings are currently in the online show of the Nevada Red Rock Pastel Society and in the Pastel Society of the West Coast at the Brea Gallery.

As well as soft pastels, Inge has explored pottery, oil painting, charcoal drawing, and tiffany glass making.

Inge serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Streams Institute, a local non-profit watershed monitoring, research and restoration group. She lives and works in her studio in Nevada City, CA with her husband and Labrador on Deer Creek, adjacent to the Tahoe National Forest.