McGregor’s pastel landscapes to be featured at CCAC in October

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

When artist Ann Bishop McGregor looks out her window, what she sees just might end up on canvas.

“I guess what I’m trying to do is get people to see the beauty that’s all around us, in God’s creation,” McGregor said. “It’s all here, we just have to open our eyes to see it. That’s what I’m trying to achieve.”

McGregor, who primarily works in soft pastels which depict scenes of Iowa landscape and agriculture, is the featured artist for the month of October at the Charles City Arts Center. The CCAC will be holding a reception for McGregor at 5 p.m. next Friday, Oct. 5, and she is planning to have a gallery talk sometime during the reception.

The exhibit at the CCAC will be all pastel paintings, and will mostly feature her landscape work.

“A lot of landscapes — Iowa landscapes — a lot of it from right around here where we live,” she said.

McGregor said there will be at least one painting she’s done of children or pets, and there will be a few still-life paintings as well.

“I especially like pumpkins and gourds and squash,” she said.

McGregor has lived in the Charles City area since she married her husband, Steve, in 1981, and the two are the parents of three grown children and four grandchildren. They live just south of Charles City, where McGregor has a studio in her home. McGregor said she likes to sketch on site when she can, but usually that’s not an option.

“I use photos as reference material, primarily,” she said. “I have my camera with me, and sometimes I see something and snap a bunch of pictures of it and try to remember what it was that drew me into the scene or made me interested in it.”

She said she seeks the sublime in her paintings, striving to show beauty, truth and goodness through her work.

“Sometimes it’s the lighting that attracts me, or just the topic,” she said. “There are different things that get me interested, and I’ll try to remember and follow up on that.”

Although she’s not opposed to painting scenes at faraway places, she tends to like to paint what she sees every day.

“I’ve had people ask me why I don’t paint the mountains or the seashore, and those are beautiful places, but I paint what I know,” McGregor said. “I paint what’s around me right now, that’s what I’m familiar with.”

McGregor was born and raised near Bondurant and has won awards from The Artist’s Magazine, the UART Online Pastel Show, the Iowa Pastel Society and Art-a-Fest in Charles City, among others.

She has her work in galleries and sales outlets in Charles City, Nashua and most recently at the Clear Lake Art Center. She said she hopes her art can cause people to see the world around them in a different light.

“I’ve had different people comment to me about the sky — they’re noticing the sky now — the clouds, the sunset, the different atmospheric conditions,” she said. “They’ve told me they’re noticing these things because of some of the paintings that I’ve done, and that pleases me.”

McGregor attended Bondurant-Farrar Schools and later graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in graphic design. Following college, she was art director for a Waterloo advertising agency, but now, her focus is on fine art.

“Since I was a child, I’ve been interested in art — drawing, and then painting,” she said.

She became interested in oil painting in high school, and mentioned Mary Muller and Maxine Pendry as two of the many art teachers over the years who were instrumental in helping her hone her craft.

“They got me started, and then I’ve done a lot of study on my own,” McGregor said. “I used to work primarily with oil, although I’ve done work in watercolor and acrylic, and other media. Pastel and oil are similar in the way you work dark to light. And so, I had been interested in it for a number of years.”

It was an art teacher — and a Christmas gift — that clinched the evolution from oils to pastels.

“Maxine Pendry had introduced and demonstrated pastel to the students, and I’d been interested ever since,” McGregor said. “Then, I few years ago, I asked my kids for a small set of pastels for Christmas. They came through, so I’ve been working with those ever since. It’s been fun, learning how to use them.”