“I knew before I retired from teaching music in the public schools that I would be painting landscapes using pastels as my medium. With knowledge from high school art classes, I began studying about the many techniques of painting with pastels. I started painting that fall after retiring and that has been twenty years.

Watching and observing landscapes has given me a new appreciation of how quickly a landscape can change. A tree is affected by weather and its surrounding; an old barn falls apart even more; light constantly shifts as the sun moves, changing everything. Capturing these moments is part of the fun. Reinventing those moments into something that is your own is quite the journey.
​
I am always looking for new techniques and love to experiment with them. Life is full of surprises and so is painting.”
– Rich Ford

Rich Ford is a Petersburg, IL native and a founding member of the Illinois Prairie Pastel Society