2024 Pastel Competition

Lyn Asselta has considered the landscape her muse since she was a child. Growing up on the coast of Maine, where weather often changed by the minute, the effects of atmosphere on land and water were an everyday, mesmerizing occurrence. That fascination kept her occupied for decades while living along the Atlantic Ocean and intracoastal waterway in northeast Florida and in the Smoky mountains of western North Carolina. As of 2019, she once again calls Maine home. She’s spent a lifetime reveling in the rich details of the natural world and she draws from her love of nature when creating her paintings.  Her chosen medium of pastel allows her to extend her tactile sense of communicating with the world into the painting process at her easel. Asselta’s paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States and have been included in invitational exhibitions in France and China. As a workshop instructor, she has taught in Canada, Curaçao and extensively across the USA. She is an IAPS (International Association of Pastel Societies) Eminent Pastelist, a Pastel Society of America Master Pastelist, a member of the Salmagundi Club of NYC, a Master Pastelist with the Southeastern Pastel Society, and is the founder and past president of the First Coast Pastel Society in northeast Florida. In 2009, Lyn was selected as an Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park in Maine. Her work has been featured in art publications including Pastel Journal, Plein Air Magazine, and Pratique des Arts magazine (France). Her landscape paintings and process have been included in several books on the pastel medium and plein air painting.