A Pastelist's Thanksgiving: Teachers

'To the Beach Once More'               18x24               pastel              ©Karen Margulis
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I have much to be thankful for. I have been blessed both in my art life and my regular life. Since this is the week of Thanksgiving I decided to devote my blog this week to my own list of gratitudes.....A Pastelist's Thanksgiving.

I'll begin the week by thanking my teachers. All of the wonderful artists who so willingly shared their passion and instruction with their students. With their lessons I have been able to find my own voice and express it with my pastels.

I am weaving a wonderful piece of cloth. Each teacher gives me the threads....some more, some I embrace, some I may discard. But it is up to me to take these threads and weave them together to create my own work...work that becomes uniquely personal. Teachers may provide the threads but it is up to the student to do the work and weave those many lessons together.

"Teaching is an essential form of payback. Most artists, including myself, owe a lot to our teachers and mentors. It's only fair to take our knowledge and 'pay it forward.' Michael Chesley Johnson

Now as a teacher myself I strive to pass on these threads to my own students. May they all weave their own beautiful cloth.

I wish to offer a thank you to all of the teachers who have given me thread for my cloth beginning with my highschool art teacher Mrs. Ruelle to my most recent teachers: (in no particular order) Marsha Savage, Terry Ludwig, Albert Handell, Richard McKinley, Stan Sperlak, Doug Dawson, Ann Templeton, Duane Wakeham, Marc Hanson, Bill Creevy, Liz Haywood-Sullivan, Elizabeth Mowry,Deborah Secor and Margaret Dyer.