Native to the Chicago area, Kathleen Newman PSA LAPS-MC combines a focused sense of observation and sensitivity in her award-winning pastel and oil landscape paintings. After her studies at the American Academy of Art, she began an illustration and design business, Queen of Arts Studios, Inc. and then turned to painting full time after the arrival of her children. Inspired by the turn of the century Impressionists and Tonalists, Kathleen paints in the plein air tradition, creating small studies on location and then working larger paintings in her studio. She strives to capture the certain mood of the moment and bring that subtle nuance to the painting, the color, light and shapes that help create a sense of place. Kathleen continues to be inspired by sailing on Lake Michigan, walks through the city near her studio and enjoying nature close to home at the beautiful Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Using oil or pastel, her paintings are both a representation of the outside world and a reflection of her inner response to its beauty. With practice, she focuses during the process of painting and through painting is learning to see. The ability to look and simplify, to organize the value patterns, shapes, edges, and color is a never-ending course of study. As an artist, she hopes to experience and recreate a certain mood and possibly invoke a spark of recognition in the viewer as well. Kathleen has earned signature status in the Pastel Society of America, American Society of Marine Artists, and American Transparent Watercolor Society and is a member of the historic Palette & Chisel Academy of Fine Arts, Chicago Pastel Painters, Coast Guard Artists, American Impressionist Society, and Oil Painters of America. AWARDS International Association of Pastel Artists, Master’s Circle Gold Medal Award 2007 Best of Show, American Impressionist Society, Taos, NM 2005, International Artist, 2003, Pastel Artist International, 2002, Pastel Journal 2001, 2002, Artists Magazine, 2000, 2003. PUBLICATIONSBest of Portraits, Northlight Books The Chicago Art Scene, CrowWoods Publishing.