Art Challenge

Art Challenge: Impressionism

This session of the Impressionist Club we will be studying an Impressionist technique through the paintings of Mary Cassatt. She was not French! She was an American. We are studying Mary’s style of Impressionism because of how she used color in her paintings.

Before the Impressionist movement artists painted smoothly, mixing their paint colors on a palette with fine brushstrokes on canvas. The Impressionists changed that! They mixed their colors on the canvas, painting thick or thin ‘chunks’ of color side by side, often contrasting colors, that when looked at from afar ‘blended’ visually to the eye and appeared like one color! This technique produced a more active and alive ‘impression’ of whatever subject matter they were painting.

Mary Cassatt’s particular use of this technique created a mood and a certain emotion through her use of ‘loose’ (instead of hard and quick) brushstrokes of color. She used a lot of complementary colors (color opposites on the color wheel – ie orange and purple) in her work to create a more vibrant image.

Use your Artist eyes to study these 3 paintings below. Can you see her color contrasts? Do you see her looser brushstrokes? What are her color choices?

Print and fill out the raffle form. Bring it to the front office and you can win a raffle prize!

For more information please contact: Jennifer de la Port