Close-up of “Storm Surf at Cape Kiwanda,” Pastel, by John Cummings
John Cummings is an accomplished pastel painter, working over the last 30 years, just about half a lifetime if one lives long enough to say that. He had grown up doing drawings as a child and this continued all during medical school, when he scribbled drawings in pencil on napkins at coffee shops, with coffee rings that his cup left behind.
Then, fast forward, while raising a family in Newberg Oregon, where he was a busy family doctor, he resumed some formal studies in pastel painting off and on, in the 1990’s at Oregon College of Arts and Crafts in Portland Oregon, as well as studying the demanding avocation of landscape painting in pastel, both with his mentors, Gary Fagin, on location many summers in the San Juan Islands, as well as traveling with his other mentor, Richard McKinley, painting on locations in the Southwest and in locales in Southern Oregon.
Painting on location en plein air as noted above, as well as in his studio, he long ago focused exclusively on pastel painting, having found that medium of artistry to his liking more than oils or acrylics.
His small-town medical practice was all consuming, sharing on-call duties with eight other GP’s days and nights all year round, he still managed to always find time squeezed-in to paint, pursuing a life-long avocation. Retiring from medical practice in 2010, he has since devoted his efforts full-time to painting.
He fills his thermos bottle with some warm coffee and heads out into the rural agricultural countryside nearby, searching for a landscape to paint, and suddenly will experience a vision of what narrative scenes evoke his imagination with possibilities. Painting on location, within the landscape, needs speed due to the changing light so that two hours seems to be the longest any painting session can be, but he will return subsequent days at the same hour to continue the most accurate renditions of the scene he can manage. He’s gotten to know many farmers in the area who, one by one, have approached him out of curiosity, but after returning to their fields day after day, friendships have often developed–relationships that have lasted for decades. For further exploration of this artist and his work, please view his website at: www.johncummingsstudio.com. His recent fine art book publication just last year, Pastel Stories, a compilation of 65 high definition image, plus artistic musings, can be purchased through his website.
