When master pastel artist, Judith Carducci passed away in 2023 she left a gaping hole in the art world. I will be eternally grateful to the major role she played in my own art trajectory during the two decades I knew her. She was a catalyst…and just what I needed, (whether I liked it or not) at all the right times, as I came back into fine art and painting after spending the previous decade doing graphic design and making babies.
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| Purple Hoodie Judith Carducci In the Collection of Judy Takács |
I first saw one of her pastel portraits at the Valley Art Center as part of a Portrait show around 2005. This was before Facebook let everyone everywhere see everything art-wise. I had no idea what was going on in contemporary figurative and realistic art, but I was thrilled that someone in Ohio was creating such beautiful, heartfelt and skilled images of people.
When I saw that Judith Carducci would be giving a weekend workshop at the Valley Art Center, I immediately made babysitting plans and signed up! I bought a set of her pastels on the very first day. Pastels were a great medium for transitioning back to painting, and easy to tote to my life drawing classes at the Valley Art Center with Bud Diehl.
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| The Judith Carducci Set of Pastels |
A few years later, the next Judy workshop I took, marked the first day my youngest went off to Kindergarten. It was at the Cuyahoga Valley Art Center, a good 45 minutes from my house. Because of kid’s bus schedules, I arrived late and had to leave early. Judy wasn’t thrilled with that, I remember. But I showed up anyway, loved watching her demo, and did a pastel drawing each day of the week-long workshop.
As an art school grad from the late 80s, the idea of an instructor drawing on my work was abhorrent to me. I remember Judy telling us we needed to get over that.
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| Judy's Cowboy at Judy's Judy Takács/Judith Carducci |
The first time she drew on my work took me by surprise.
I had spent the past several hours perfecting the structural drawing of our model, dressed in cowboy gear to challenge us. It took great self-restraint to hold off the reward of bestowing those final highlights to bring my cowboy to life. My plan was to bounce those in around 1:30 since I had to leave the workshop by 2:00. At around 1:15 though, Judy popped over to critique my work…her words, thankfully, were positive. She picked up a pastel crayon from the Judith Carducci set I had purchased at her first workshop. It had a creative name for warm white like, “Creamy Cappuccino” or "Swan Feathers." Before I could blink, she had given my cowboy a twinkle in his eye, a sun-kissed cheek and a juicy wet lip…snatching the glory of my highlights from me! It was like she ate the frosting off my cupcake!
The next day, armed with experience, I hurried to beat her to the highlights. I was on to her tricks. At the same time, I left her highlights in place on the Cowboy… they were perfect.
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| Detail: Judy's Cowboy with and Judy's Highlights Judy Takács/Judith Carducci |
The third time I signed up for a workshop with Judy Carducci was at the Orange Art Center; a three-day workshop to officially kick off my career as a full-time painter. I had spent the past couple years building my dream studio right upstairs in my house. I had not christened it yet by starting a painting in that sacred space. Judy’s workshop would give me the refresher course and jump start I needed to go full steam ahead as a painter. At this workshop I brought my oil paints, not pastels.
This was the workshop where I think I finally cracked her tough-love demeanor.
I brought a not so good painting that I turned upside down and started my new painting on, filling in giant swaths with bold colors and big brushes. When she came around to give her advice, I was thrilled when she said, “I don't think you need my help coming out of your shell!” I felt like maybe I had earned her respect…which meant a LOT…and I don't believe she painted on my painting that day.
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| Robert at Judy's Judy Takács |
From that point forward, inspired and determined, I did whatever I could to paint from a live model whenever I could. I signed up for a morning life drawing class with George Kozmon and an afternoon portrait painting class with Lou Grasso at the Orange Art Center. I used these classes as opportunities to paint real humans from life, without the pressure of calling models, scheduling them at my studio, organizing a group, paying them, or scarier yet, doing a commissioned portrait. I came up with many good paintings from those classes, sometimes combining models into different narrative scenarios. My portrait teacher, Lou Grasso, pretty much left me to my own devices, with friendly encouragement.
I entered one of the portraits that resulted from these sessions into a show at the Salmagundi Art Club in New York, and lo and behold it was accepted! I was over the moon, because the Salmagundi was this legendary art venue I’d been hearing about since José Cintron's Portrait Class at Cleveland Institute of Art!
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| Laura's Gray Braid Judy Takács In the permanent collection of the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve |
I told a mutual friend this great news and she bragged on my behalf to Judy.
This mutual friend relayed to me that Judy bristled when she found out about my acceptance to the Salmagundi show. She said that I wasn’t allowed to enter work created under instruction into a national art show at the Salmagundi!
At first I was completely taken aback, and insulted by her reaction to my career milestone. Laura's Gray Braid was my own original work, with no input or brushstrokes from an instructor, (Lou doesn’t paint on your work like Judy did) BUT it was done in a classroom setting, and the instructor had set up the model, the pose and the lighting…not me.
After thinking long and hard, I decided…because of Judy’s words…that it was time for me to stop taking classes and find my own people to paint. That’s what real live grown-up painters do.
So, I set up a yearlong effort painting senior citizens at my hometown senior center. These were my people that I found, set up and painted. Many works from this project showed all over the country, won awards and had several solo shows too.
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| Right and Better Left Unsaid Judy Takács Private Collection |
This led to my Chicks with Balls project, where I asked my courageous female friends and family to pose topless holding balls for coverage and to symbolize their strengths and struggles. This project, the topic of 2 books, wrapped at 50 paintings and enjoyed 4 solo shows, including my first solo museum show at the Zanesville Museum of Art in 2020. Three of them are showing right now at Understory Gallery at the 78th Street Studios.
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| Nina is Grace Under Fire Judy Takács Collection of the Artist |
My Chicks project sprouted my Goddess Project where I reimagine the mythology of all the religions through a contemporary feminist lens. I purposely seek out women whose attributes, physical, vocational and otherwise intersect with the Goddess role I ask them to play.
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| Venus DeMilo Arms Herself Judy Takács Private Collection |
Judy Carducci was the catalyst for my going to my first Portrait Society of America Conference in 2010. I’ve been hooked ever since. In 2010, she had encouraged a mutual artist friend, Susie Porges to attend the next PSoA conference in Washington DC. Susie invited me to go with her…and I was hooked. The Portrait Society of America was a giant figurative group hug. I found so many kindred spirits and a world of people who paint people…just when I thought I was the only one!
When, a few years later, Judy wrote about my Chicks with Balls painting project for the Portrait Society Journal, I was over the moon.
When she asked me to Chair Social Media for the Cecilia Beaux Forum for the Portrait Society…I was thrilled, took the bull by the horns and made the job my own. The Cecilia Beaux Forum is a Sub-Committee of the Portrait Society of America that focuses on the specific issues that affect women artists. Something many of us had in common was an interrupted and circuitous art career because of detours for child-rearing. Chairing Social Media helped me meet so many artists whom I had formerly been only a fan of, but because of my role…which Judy assigned me… many became peers and friends.
So, when Judith Carducci asked me to be one of the first to read her autobiography, Role Reversal, My Life In-Out-In Art and to write a testimonial, I was honored beyond belief.
I wrote the first line of my testimonial before even reading the first word of her book. I knew I’d start the testimonial with the sentence…
“I have long thought of Judith Carducci as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Portrait Artist world.” That she put my quote on the back cover with testimonials from Louis Zona, Director of the Butler Institute of American Art and M. Stephen Doherty, Editor-in-Chief of American Artist and Plein Air Magazines…was an honor beyond honors.
Judith launched her book, Role Reversal, My life In-Out-In Art, at the 2023 Portrait Society Conference after she finished posing for two younger portrait masters, Rose Frantzen and Jeffrey Hein.
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| Judith Carducci poses for artists Jeffrey Hein and Rose Frantzen Portrait Society of America Conference, Washington DC 2023 |
During her posing session, she was asked to recite the Rudyard Kippling poem, When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted: L’Envoi that was inspiration for her iconic Vanitas at 80. She did this flawlessly from memory, delighting the audience with lines about a heaven for artists where “the youngest critic has died,” a place where “no one shall work for money and no one shall work for fame,” but painting for eternity, without exhaustion, “with brushes of comet’s hair.”
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| Vanitas at 80 Judith Carducci |
When the two-hour session was over, Judy signed books for a line of adoring fans that snaked through the hotel.
Three months later, August 8, 2023, Judy passed away peacefully in her sleep, leaving a legacy of instruction, mentorship, friendship. She told it like she saw it and didn’t hold back, and I will be forever grateful for her influence in my art and life.
