Our demonstrator was Loren Doucette.
The meeting was held in the Guild Hall, First Congregational Church (middle side door), Sanborn Street, Reading, Wednesday March 12th, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Loren demonstrated a pastel floral painting. Loren is a dynamic demonstrator.
We have some photographs of the event in case you could not make it there in person.
Here are some recent works done by Loren.
She began the demo by sharing her background story
and some of her philosophy about painting.
She showed us some previous works in her book to illustrate
how her style has changed over the years.
Loren likes to place a previous painting behind her setup to inspire her.
Here she shows the painting that she has chosen for the demo.
This is her setup.
She does her pastel paintings on sanded paper.
The tooth of the paper makes it accept the pastels better.
Sometimes she uses a collage of flower images instead of a live setup.
Starting with charcoal, Loren does a loose sketch of the subject.
The beginnings of the drawing.
She continues drawing until she has activated every part of the picture plane.
The drawing.
After the drawing was done, she put in the color.
The color gets filled in rapidly.
Continuing to refine the colors in the painting.
The finished painting.
Loren Doucette lives in Gloucester, MA working as a full-time painter. Her work has shown in solo and group exhibitions since 2006. She received a BFA in Drawing and Painting in 2013 from Montserrat College of Art where she participated in Montserrat’s study-abroad program in Italy. It was there that landscape painting became a stabilizing force in her work. Using Oil, Acrylic, Pastel and Gouache, her work includes architectural landscapes unique to Gloucester’s harbor, vibrant floral paintings, emotional figurative work and abstractions that come from the bones of all three subjects. Her paintings are prayers hovering between realism and abstraction and celebrate the sun, flowers, people and color of this world. Her work can be viewed at her gallery seven days a week from June to January where she offers art mentoring and classes during the winter months. Seven Suns Gallery offers her original artwork, giclee prints and a large assortment of her greeting cards. All of Loren’s work can also be viewed and purchased on her website and online store. https://lorendoucetteart.com/home.html