Kathleen Keliher's art featured in Country Fair

Painter Kathleen Keliher is the featured artist in the annual art show that accompanies the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration's Country Fair.

The Art Show and Country Fair is scheduled for Friday-Saturday, August 7-8. Friday evening features an artists' reception with many of the artists featured in the annual art show in attendance.

Keliher is a Bend artist, but she is developing ties to Sisters Country. She is a member of the Hood Avenue Art gallery in Sisters. This is her first year entering the church art show.

She is noted for her pastel work and for oils, featuring landscapes of Central Oregon.

"When I first started painting I did watercolor," she told The Nugget.

Watercolors are notoriously finicky. Any misstep can ruin a painting, making it "muddy."

"I went to a demonstration where they used pastels to revive the whole piece, and I thought: 'I could do that,'" she recalled.

She quickly came to love the medium for its own sake.

A nurse by profession, she worked in Hospice in Bend before moving to Portland several years ago during the recession. She moved back to Bend a year ago and got back into her painting.

"I pulled my pastels out again and have been going to town," she said.

Actually, she mostly goes to the country. She's the founder of Plein Aire Painters of Oregon. Plein aire painters do their work in the open air, outdoors.

While she's fond of pastels, she also works in oils. She often does small oils in plein aire in preparation for larger pastel works done in studio.

"I've been really pushing the small oils," she says.

To view her work, visit http://www.kathleenkeliher.com. And visit with her at the artists' reception at the Country Fair and Art Show from 5 to 8 p.m. at The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, 68825 Brooks Camp Rd. just west of Sisters. Admission and parking are free.