In 1984, the Northwest Pastel Society was formed, evolving from the dissolution of a small club of local artists who had studied and exhibited together during the previous decade. Intent upon increasing public awareness and acceptance of pastel as a serious artistic medium and to further their own artistic growth, six artists from the old group banded together to form the new group. From this modest start, NPS became the first Pacific Northwest art organization to sponsor juried exhibits and promote showcase exhibits exclusively for pastel artists.

HELEN ROLLER was the president of the club preceding the present NPS, and joined with the others who left that group, to start the new NPS. Her support and knowledge of parliamentarian procedures provided invaluable assistance to the fledgling group who had big dreams and goals for themselves, to construct bylaws and conduct orderly meetings. • In recognition for her contributions to the success of NPS, Helen was the first member to be voted a "Life Membership"; in our Society.

SYDNEY WHITSON was the first elected president of the Northwest Pastel Society. The six founding members were: SYDNEY WHITSON; DIANE THOMPSON; ALICE JOY; HELEN ROLLER; LINDA MC CAUGHREN; and LOUISE ARNTSON (who designed our NPS logo). Shortly thereafter, Clark and Dorene Elster also became members, DORENE as Treasurer. Our meetings were held in a small public library in Kenmore, north of Seattle.

Sydney directed the small group to establish goals and objectives for NPS. Without Sydney’s leadership, this writer believes the Society would never have survived. Her ability to listen to all the ideas given to her and to focus us on the many goals we all aspired to for the Society’s future, demonstrated her great patience. She never once said a discouraging word or suggested that a goal couldn’t be met. She directed us in finding how these hopeful goals could be met.

We wanted: more members; paid demos at our meetings; Members Only juried exhibits; and prize money for juried exhibits. To sort out the requirements for any of these goals to be met was Sydney’s responsibility and achievement. Our first group show was held at a community art festival in Bothell, Washington.

DIANE THOMPSON was elected to be NPS President after Sydney. Diane began implementing some of our stated goals. She approached the Issaquah Gallery and Judith McNea (owner and future NPS member) who agreed to host our first NPS members only juried show for our seven members. This changed our meetings from discussing goals and future plans to implementing and accomplishing programs. Money had to be raised. A judge had to be found. We had to produce enough paintings from our small group to present a credible show in a gallery. This writer still remembers the lecture from the chosen jurist about our unprofessional matting and framing presented in the show. But we had a start and we learned from each of our experiences. During Diane’s tenure, she instituted painting demonstrations by our own members. We had no money to pay for outside artists, so this turned out to be a great solution. Everyone enjoyed and learned something from these demos. The thing this writer heard most, was that there seemed to be no absolutes in how to produce a painting since everyone seemed to develop their own personal approach to accomplish the same goal

Early in Diane’s tenure De Loma Davis and Gretchen Griep joined NPS. We were on a roll and soon expanded our membership to about twelve. Our second juried show was our first to be open to all pastel artists in the greater Seattle region, and was juried by William Reese (a local artist of national stature who gave credibility to our show). This show was a great success for us. We were able to award some modest prizes, and we gained about a dozen new members.

DE LOMA DAVIS became our third NPS president. De Loma had ambitious goals for the Society. She felt we needed to go national to broaden our horizons and allow others to participate. She launched us on our first NPS national open juried exhibit. This writer did not fully appreciate what De Loma was doing until well into the project. I was the Treasurer and neither one of us were sure that NPS could raise and cover prize money, given the Society’s budget. We agreed we would cover any short fall in prize money out of our own pockets if necessary. I should state that the prize money wasn’t much, so the risk would hardly bankrupt us, but we were still nervous about going national. "Would enough artists participate?" we worried! We needn’t have worried! Our first National Open Juried NPS Show was a success. I’m sure we would have fooled around with local shows for years had De Loma not pulled us into the National scene.
       To attract prestigious artists to come and jury our National show, De Loma approached Mike Dupenthaller, owner of "Gallery Select" in Seattle and an artist’s workshops promoter for nationally known artists, to persuade those artists to judge our shows in exchange for a token fee if NPS promoted and filled their workshops. Mike, who was an avid and generous supporter of the arts and art organizations, readily agreed to help. Thus, while we were an unknown group without a reputation or track record with these artists to trust and bet their scheduling on, we were able to sign up big name artists with Mike’s help. After our first National Show our membership exploded. Our growth and how to deal with it was our primary order of business. Should we have a National Membership? How would we serve them? Membership screening criteria was adopted with a two tier membership structure (full and associate).

CLARK ELSTER became the fourth president of NPS, initiating an aggressive national membership drive that doubled the size of NPS. Clark introduced and created our NPS newsletter to communicate with our now far flung membership in order to give these folks the advantage of an exchange of information as well as a way for them to have some input from a distance. This proved to be a very time consuming project. Clark was editor, writer, printer, mailer and you name it, he did it! He was the humorist who conducted "Conversations With the Old Masters" and the sage who made up art related filler sayings in "musings at my easel".
      He refers to himself as a cuddly computer illiterate artist banging away — first on an obsolete but simple computer and then on a succession of upgraded Macs.  It was his labor of love and it became a conduit between the Society and its members far and wide. Costs were ever present in those days and he had to maintain a low budget operation but still got the word out to serve and inform, which after all was the whole point, and it worked! Clark persuaded a gallery in Yatchets on the Oregon coast to host our first NPS "Members Only" out of state traveling show. This became an annual get-a-way weekend so our members in the Seattle area could better get to know our many members in Oregon. That connection lasted until the gallery closed several year later. Since then, this annual event has expanded and been staged in down town Seattle, Ballard, Wenatchee, Everett, and Spokane all in Washington and in Hood River, Lake Oswego and Bend in Oregon.

OBEDINIAH HEAVNER was elected our fifth President in 1990. Obediniah is an illustrator who illustrated food packaging and just at that time was successfully breaking into 3-D clay illustration. Obediniah’s greatest contribution was instilling in our group the importance of striving for professionalism as artists. She began the process to polish the Society’s many remaining procedural rough edges. She improved Board participation to conduct routine business separate from regular NPS meetings. She also solidly carried on the programs of her predecessors

GRETCHEN GRIEP became our sixth president during a period of more growth and several organizational crisis’s. Gretchen managed to hold our Society together during a rough year of growing pains. It was obvious that we needed to change and simplify how we conducted our business and meetings so she formed a Bylaws Committee to streamline and simplify NPS procedures and protocols, and to more clearly delineate duties of officers. During this time she also managed a successful as-ever National Juried Open Exhibit and workshop and our members show on the Oregon coast during the big Seattle to LA freeze and blizzard!

PEGGY BRAEUTIGAM our seventh president, initiated the practice of moving meetings to different communities around the Northwest so members in other areas could attend at least one meeting a year. Requirements for membership became all inclusive — open to all, by eliminating the screening process and the designation of associate member. It was her confidence that propelled us into promoting and conducting our own workshops and not rely on others to handle the arrangements for us.
       Recognizing the potential benefit the Internet could hold for NPS, Peggy recruited new member John Knapp from Walla Walla to create our NPS Web Page as our official NPS Webmaster. Through their efforts we became the first international art organization to sponsor an interactive web site that has both public, members only, and gallery art web sites. Now our members can display their paintings on our Gallery Art web site.

DARLENE MORGENSEN our eighth president, began training for the position and began working on our National Show (as Vice President) long before she actually took office. Organizing NPS exhibits has become such a big project for its volunteers and the business of workshops nation-wide has become so popular, NPS exhibits and workshops must be planned a year or more in advance. In order to insure adequate lead time and leadership continuity for these events, and provide for a smooth transition from one president to the next without a break in the momentum of the office, a way had to be found to have the new president up to speed by the time they took office.
        Thus the 1st Vice President's job description was expanded to include "president in training" as well as show chair. This approach has worked well. As Darlene's first year in office is just coming to a close, NPS has conducted it's first and very successful "out of town" workshop in Port Townsend at Fort Worden, conducted it's best yet National Open Juried Exhibit, and instituted streamlined financial procedures which simplifies the Treasurer's task and fully utilizes a professional bookkeeper.


Everyone who saw our 1998 exhibit was impressed. The show even received a real newspaper review for the first time!

LYNNETT FINK  bio to come

DONNA TRENT bio to come

PAULETTE JOHNSON  bio to come