Chris Bronstad

Chris Bronstad, artist. I live for a lot of reasons, but art is not the least among them!

I am a realist artist, specializing in portraits and landscapes in charcoal, oil, and pastel, doing my Plein air painting in oil, living with my wife in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest where we've lived by Puget Sound since 1987 having moved from Texas. We eventually settled on the Key Peninsula where we raised our daughter and shared with her a passion for nature and art, both of which have truly blossomed in her life. My wife and daughter are also superb artists. 

 I taught middle school sciences (Earth, Life, Physical), for almost 29 years as well as math, aerospace and art (2007-2018). I also taught afterschool drawing and art to this age group for 21 years and some adult drawing classes off and on since 2009.  I retired from public school teaching in 2018, and since then I taught drawing classes for seniors at the Mustard Seed Project in 2019, and 2021 and have been Plein air painting with many of my students since May 2019. 

Regarding my development as an artist, I've drawn realistically since elementary school and did my first oil painting with my grandmother in the mid '60s. A number of years ago in the mid 70s, on an extended tour of Europe, I visited many of the great art cities and museums from Munich, London, Paris and Amsterdam to Florence, Rome and Venice and reveled in the opportunity to study, firsthand the work of the Masters. I'm inspired by many realist artists, and three stand out:  John Singer Sargent, Andrew Wyeth and Richard Schmid for their styles, subject interests and vision. I am largely self taught, focusing in my own art particularly portraiture, figure, landscape and wildlife with a strong emphasis in accurate drawing, naturalism in color and mood. In the mid 90s I began doing portraits in charcoal, pastels, now in oil. I am interested in the likeness and expressive character of my subjects. Over the last number of years while developing my approach to portraits in charcoal, I've used various ways to build up my tones including applying powered charcoal with different sizes of paint brushes. These give me control for the velvety and subtle value gradations that I'm aiming for. I've taken portrait workshops with noted artists Melissa Weinman, Gary Faigin (the Gage, Seattle) and figure drawing classes with Juliette Aristides (the Gage). I am currently doing portraits of people and animals to raise money for humanitarian aid to Ukraine 

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.