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Medium:
Pastel and Oil -
Location:
Cape Cod, MA -
Year Acquired Take It Easel:
1980 -
Years Experience:
50 -
Artist's Website:
http://www.rosalienadeau.com - Artist's Links:
"I can paint 8 x 10 inches or 4 by 6 feet. It's ideal for holding my many pastels or oil painting supplies at working height...the Take It Easel design is perfect for me!!"
Since high school in the 60's, I'd been painting on location with an unstable aluminum easel and a snack tray to hold my supplies. In 1985 I saw Loretta Feeney using a Gloucester easel with a big paint box. I called the art supply store in Gloucester and ordered what was the last one made by the fellow who had crafted them for three generations of Gruppe painters.
I can paint 8 x 10 inches or 4 by 6 feet. The Take It Easel is ideal for holding my many pastels or oil painting supplies at working height. I delight in opening flat my old paint box with its 16 x 20 inch Plexiglas pallet. My Take It Easel holds it all! My supply bag hangs handy and dry while I paint in the dewy mornings or in mushy marshes. My roll of paper towels fits on the end of the drop down support bar. The Take It Easel set-up eliminates bending or reaching for anything!
I keep my 53 inch umbrella clamped to the extra peg, and with a spring clamp for stability, I can shade both my painting and myself! Closed, the umbrella bundles right up within the buckled easel strap. With my loaded backpack and folded easel over my shoulder, my hands are both free to carry my big painting back to the car.
I now own three Take It Easels. I travel with one and leave two set up in the studio, where I find that the Take It Easel uses less floor space than a taboret and studio easel combination and it's very light and easy to move. The original Gloucester easel was made with tacked zinc leg brackets and a fine gage spring lever which I bent and broke. In fixing it, my husband Tom was fascinated by the streamlined simplicity of the leg movements. He spent a year and a half fine-tuning the revival of the Gloucester easel. He strengthened the lever quality, upgraded to brass for the three-way hinge and leg brackets, and used brass bolts instead of tacks. My son, Tobin, took over the business, crafting maple hardwood for warp-free stability and replaced the complicated internal spring mechanism with a simple spring-pin made from rust-proof case-hardened stainless steel, with a beautiful solid brass knob. Voila! The revival of the Gloucester easel. The Take It Easel design is perfect for me!!