Recent BEST OF SHOW winner at this year’s Falls Festival of the Arts’ Plein Air competition shared her talent at our Sept. 23, 2025 meeting.
Mary Beth Drabiszczak [pronounced Drab-i-zak] is an artist, educator, and art historian based in Waukesha. Mary Beth earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and graduated in 2023 with a Master’s in Art History from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is a Signature Member of the Wisconsin Pastel Artists (WPA) which holds membership in the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS).
As a pastelist, Mary Beth showed how she works with saturated color and gestural mark-making. She works in her studio and en plein air, often creating studies from direct observation. Her goal is to capture while observing portraits of the landscape, animals, or figures. Mary Beth explained her approach to document these experiences, which can be quickly notated in pastel through bold and suggestive strokes.
