Maria Iva – Friday Night Guest – November 15, 2024

( Submitted by Taline Kavoukian)

Maria is a Mississauga based landscape painter. She creates with both oil and dry pastel mediums. Maria came to painting in her late forties, but picked up her new medium quickly from teachers such as Susan Sarback, Camille Przewodek, and Margaret Ferraro. She has won numerous awards, including First Place in the Perch’n Paint Plein Air Competition in Grand Bend last fall and First Place in the 33rd Purely Pastel Juried Show last summer in Toronto. Maria is still working full time as a senior manager for a community organization, but will transition to being a full time teacher and artist in 2025!

Maria finds inspiration in exploring the provincial parks and conservation areas of Southern Ontario. She enjoys painting all the seasons, and some of her favourite subjects are dunes and marshes. She believes in the importance of painting on site in order to closely observe the colours and values more carefully. Last year, she was invited to write an article about her oil palette knife technique for the International Artist Magazine. (https://www.mariaiva.com/ArticleDetail/10696.) She is an Elected Member of the Society of Canadian Artists and the Ontario Society of Artists, as well as a Master Signature Member of Pastel Artists Canada.

Maria talked us through a few recordings of her process painting in oils with a palette knife, and answered questions. She finds that using a palette knife have benefits such as not requiring mediums or cleaning of brushes; encouraging cleaner colours, looser strokes, and faster painting; and providing textural and impressionistic results! She paints wet-on-wet with a very light touch, which allows the paint to slide on layer by layer. The first layer is very thin as she lays down the structure of the painting with shapes in warms and cools. In the second layer she adds local colour. In subsequent layers, Maria continues to add detail and develop the painting to the finished stage.

We were all very impressed with Maria’s paintings and process. She emphasized the importance of mixing colours in advance and mixing up sufficient paint so as not to skimp on textural application when using the palette knife. She suggests using a palette knife which is flexible (metal) and has a pointed tip. Thank you, Maria for an exciting and educational presentation!

For more information about her paintings and workshops, visit Maria’s website at https://mariaiva.com