Featured Artist for June, 2008

Greg Helding, an artist member of the Artists Gallery, is the featured artists for June. Come see Greg's new work.

A Racine native, Greg became interested in drawing in grade school and excelled in High School art classes. Twenty years later,in 1993, Greg started taking night classes at the Wustum Museum. After trying charcoal, watercolor, and oil. Greg discovered pastels in a drawing class and was hooked. Greg has since learned portrait and life drawing under the instruction of John Parsons.

"I like the ease and convenience of working with pastels and the uniqueness of their effect on paper. When I draw with them my finished piece emerges as a painting. The different papers provide depth to the work by adding texture. I view my work as a challenge to depict objects from nature while experimenting with color and composition. I am inspired by Degas, one of the best known artists to ever use pastels.

Greg has also begun exploring encaustic painting... a very old technique involving wax, resins and pigment.