Susan Frost soft pastels demonstration 17 August 2024

Susan comes from two families that have many artists, art teachers and photographers. Some are still in South Africa, but also in USA and England. She grew up with her grandmother’s paintings and watched her father paint various portraits in his spare time: she thought it was something all families did and cannot and cannot remember a time when she wasn’t drawing the world around her.

She began formal art lessons in Durban when in her late teens with Anthony Blackman, who painted under the name ‘Strickland’, Titta Fasciotti and Andrew Verster. As her father had a framing and picture gallery she was surrounded by local art and artists. Her first lessons were in oils as acrylics were not as well known at that time. She then learned charcoal portrait drawing, and then pastels were added to the portraits and still-lifes.  All the work in the studios was from life: no photographs.

Anthony, now called Tony Strickland in art books, was a teacher who liked the ‘Degas’ style of pastel painting and her style was similar in many ways. She still enjoys drawing and sketching from life and often her pastel paintings show a lot of the underlying charcoal drawing.

She has only one pastel portrait that she managed to keep, and one her husband owns. Unfortunately, this was also a time in her life when she did not own a camera, so has no photo records from this time, just one photo of an oil painting, a 1968 commission.
She still loves doing pastel paintings, especially as she now has her father’s set of pastels, two donated sets and many single ones bought years ago.