Pastel Society | Annual Exhibition 2026

The 127th Annual

Exhibition

of the

Pastel Society

DIRECT 
 

TOUCH

Key Dates

Submissions open: Monday 18 August 2025, 12 noon

Submissions close: Friday 14 November, 12 noon

Notification of selection: Friday 28 November, 12 noon

Receiving Day (if selected): Saturday 10 January 2026,
10am to 5pm

Private View (invite only): Tuesday 20 January, 5pm to 8pm, official opening at 6:30pm

Exhibition opens: Wednesday 21 January, 10am to 5pm daily

Exhibition closes: Saturday 31 January, 5pm

Collection of unsold work: Thursday 5 February,
10am to 5pm

Interview with Caran d'Ache CEO, Carole Hübscher
Caran d'Ache are Sponsors of the Pastel Society

THE ReMARK September 2025 

Open Call Entries are now open for The PS Annual Exhibition 2026. See the Mall Galleries website for details. Titled ‘Direct Touch', the exhibition will again celebrate the directness of dry media & its ability to transmit feelings through the hand directly onto a surface. This is the most fundamental of human activities that we can explore & enjoy despite all the promises of what technology and in particular AI can provide us now and in the future. If we do not use it, we will lose it.

Our annual workshops at Heatherleys on the 9th 10th and11th September are now only weeks away and there are still a few places left, so don’t miss out on the opportunity for some guidance, practice and inspiration from a few of our members. We all need help from time to time.

To book, please contact rees888@btinternet.com

For our new members, we are putting together the finishing touches to our new Members’ Guide. It is all too easy to assume that someone, let alone everyone, knows how things work. At the risk of offending longer serving members, this is a common mistake so we are rectifying it and as things change, so will the guide.

And finally, for our Friends who have humbly suggested that their work may probably never get selected for our annual exhibition, but who would love an opportunity to have their work shown, we will select a few images each month for the website. To get the ball rolling, we asked Lucy Cripps to let us show her work. Lucy submitted this drawing for our annual exhibition a couple of years ago. It was accepted only for us to realise that Lucy was only 12 at the time and as the gallery cannot accept work from young artists under18, it was not eligible. So here is ‘Mrs. Maw.’ We think it has skill & an eye-catching humorous narrative.

For consideration for inclusion of a work, you should be a PSFriend & send a good image of around 1Mb with a title, your name & the medium. To help us appreciate the background to the work, feel free to include a few more words, for instance, are you just starting out or are you a long-term follower? But don’t send anything you don’t want printed & please do not send us a future submission to the PS annual exhibition. We will not lessen our standards, but we want to recognise anyone exploring pastel and dry media from different perspectives, circumstances & skill sets & to encourage that spark of enthusiasm. Please send this by the 22 September 2025 to info.thepastelsociety@gmail.com

Good painting!
Simon B. Hodges VPPS