Medium as Misfit-

The possible perception of the use of soft pastel as ‘lesser’ than paint in the hierarchy of mediums commonly exhibited. I acknowledge counter arguments to this supposition as their use can be referenced as pastel 'painting' and the National Gallery in London has (at the time of writing), a room, albeit small, devoted to works in pastel amongst its vast collection of oil paintings with Degas’s ‘After the bath, woman drying herself’ acting as a centre piece. Of course it is also well known pastels became Paula Rego’s favoured medium. Rego herself distinguished the difference from painting which involves the use of a brush while she described the concept of drawing with pastel 'pigment sticks'.