Being reflective while I was writing my newsletter introduction, my thoughts went to my friend and mentor Maggie Price. Many of you might not have had a chance to take a class with her or are even aware of her indelible influence on the pastel medium.
Let me tell you about Maggie.
In 1998 Maggie Price founded our beloved Pastel Journal Magazine with fellow pastelist Janie Hutchinson. In addition to the intense work putting out a monthly magazine, Maggie and her husband, Bill Canright, criss-crossed the country teaching pastel workshops. In 2009, she became the second IAPS President, taking on the management from the Founder, Urania Christy Tarbet. Along with all this she wrote three instructional books on pastel and did her own artwork.
Her dedication to the medium inspired many, including me. Maggie enabled my first major award (2001 Gold Award of Excellence in the Pastel 100) and inspired my teaching. Maggie and Bill traveled the world by teaching art, and that's what I wanted to do! She showed me that it was possible, something I had never considered before. One fateful day in 2010, while in Boston visiting her daughter, Maggie asked me to meet her at the airport for coffee before her flight home to New Mexico. What I thought was going to be a friendly chat turned into changing my life, for it was over that cup of coffee that Maggie asked me to consider being her vice president for IAPS. Three years later, I became IAPS third president.
Unfortunately, we lost Maggie way too early in 2013, but her influence on many of us, and her many contributions to pastel continue to reverberate throughout the medium and live on.
