Mount Gretna artist travels cross-country for art shows, to appear at Long’s Park

Morgan Pallas, a traveling artist who lives in Mount Gretna, is celebrating winning best of show in the open painting division at the Lebanon Area Fair for the second year in a row and appearing in the Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show while preparing to appear as an emerging artist in the Long’s Park Art Festival this Labor Day weekend.

“Celebrating Mr. Toad” was awarded best of show in the open painting division and first place in the watercolor division at the 69th annual Lebanon Area Fair. The 5.5″x7″ watercolor painting depicts anthropomorphic animals, subject matter often depicted in Pallas’s creative work.

“It’s actually a scene that I imagine might play out in my backyard,” she said. “I painted the wren with a wide open mouth because we have wrens that frequent our home and have built some nests on our porch. And they’re very vocal, so that’s why I portrayed the wren like that. And then, we have lots of toads and frogs around the house and lots of like little mice running around.”

The newly turned 37-year-old fine artist, who lives in Mount Gretna with her husband Dylan and their 3-year-old daughter, told LebTown she chose to depict the black-eyed Susans and plantain surrounding the animals and the wineberry treat they are enjoying because the plants grow “everywhere around here.”

Last December, Pallas created a rough sketch in a sketchbook, then used tracing paper to transfer the sketch onto watercolor paper, used a graphite pencil to finalize the details, then applied the watercolor paint. She completed the watercolor painting on Christmas Eve, about two weeks after she started working on it.

For watercolor paintings 11″x14″ and smaller, Pallas’s workflow tends to be the same. For watercolor paintings larger than 11″x14″, she uses the grid method to expand her rough sketch rather than using tracing paper to transfer it. She told LebTown that it typically takes her about two weeks to start and complete a piece.

Once she completes a piece, she takes it to a camera shop in Lancaster for fine art reproduction photography, which includes color matching and other adjustments to make the photograph as close to the original as possible.

She and her husband use the high-quality digital file to make prints; several months ago, she noted, the couple invested in a printer to make their prints in-house on high-quality textured paper.

Pallas then frames the prints using rustic frames suiting her artistic style.

“A Fairy on Her Travels” was awarded best of show in the open painting division at the 68th annual Lebanon Area Fair, marking the start of Pallas’s fair award streak.

“That one has a fairy in a walnut shell drifting down a little stream. And there’s three toads in the background like seeing her off. And some fishes swimming underneath her little walnut boat. And in the walnut boat, she has a little stick that’s attached to it,” Pallas described the 8″x10″ painting. “And there’s a little lightning bug sitting on it, just to help light the way for her when things get dark on her journey.”

The artist’s journey

Her connection to the art realm began with her parents, who made attending the Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show one of their traditions years before she was born.

“I was actually born art show weekend. My mom had made pies to take to the cottage that weekend. And then, they were getting ready to head there. And then, her water broke. … She joked that … (was) the first year that they had missed the art show in a long time,” Pallas said.

The East Petersburg Borough native attended the Gretna art show with her parents almost every year since her infancy. “My mom would say like, ‘One day, you’ll be here.’ She was very encouraging,” Pallas said, adding that her parents always believed in her.

Like many young artists, Pallas started out using crayons and colored pencils. She said she drew all the time and often checked out how-to-draw books from the library.

“I was very fortunate to grow up going through the Hempfield School District,” she said. “I’ve always had a great art program and really wonderful art teachers that were happy to give me extra support and stuff. They were very supportive and encouraging of me and what I wanted to do with art.”

Later on, Pallas worked with graphite pencils and oil paints. Due to the messy and odorous turpentine used in oil painting, she was inspired to explore a new medium, leading her to experiment with watercolors. She taught herself in the new medium through practice and watching instructors online.

Pallas said her early watercolor work featured mostly figures rather than animals or botanical elements “because that really made me nervous.”

“I started wanting to include those more. And I was just like, ‘Well, I’m never going to get better if I never start, if I don’t ever jump into it.’ So, I surprised myself with actually how well I was able to portray those things, and then it just keeps getting better and better.”

Her mother not only supported Pallas’s artist journey but also served as a catalyst to get her creative work out into the world.

“She got diagnosed with endometrial cancer and struggled with that and healing from that for years, went into remission, and then it came back,” Pallas said. “And that kind of, for me, gave me like this big wake-up call. She was … extremely healthy, the healthiest person, and then suddenly this happened, and she wasn’t.”

With this new perspective, Pallas decided to stop moving the goalposts on herself and instead made a deal with herself to apply for the Mount Gretna art show.

“So, I made that deal with myself,” Pallas said. “I applied to the show, and then I got in as an emerging artist. And I was very pleasantly surprised to see that people love my work so much that they wanted to take it home with them. And it was just a wonderful experience.”

Pallas’s mother died in July 2023, a month before her daughter’s first appearance in the Gretna show. Pallas went on to appear in the art show in 2024 and again this year.

Nowadays, Pallas creates paintings in her studio, which is a loft space in the Mount Gretna residence that she and her husband purchased in 2021 from another fine artist, who also used the loft as an art studio.

“I like to create things that you might come across when you’re hiking or in your backyard or something that you might see out of the corner of your eye,” Pallas told LebTown. She draws inspiration for the subject matter of her paintings from traditional storybooks, many of which she reads to her daughter.

The couple also recently bought a used trailer, which her husband drives cross-country for Pallas’s art show exhibitions. This replaces their previous system of packing two vehicles with artwork, driving them to art shows, and then unpacking them afterwards.

Pallas said her husband is a project manager by profession and is “very mechanically inclined. He’s like so good at building stuff. And he does have a very creative side. We decorated our booth with really beautiful garland. That was his idea. And then, the walls that we used to hang my paintings are like these wooden lattices. And he actually built those.”

She said he also helps her with marketing and pricing.

On occasion, their daughter attends the art shows. “It adds a little bit of a challenge. Things take a little bit longer to get set up, but that’s okay. She’s wonderful. And she actually enjoys helping,” Pallas told LebTown with a smile.

To aspiring artists, Pallas said, “Don’t keep moving the goalposts on yourself. We all have to start somewhere. And just, if you are having the pull to get yourself out there, just do it. Just take photos of your best pieces. And there’s lots of information online of how to take your best photos yourself. So, just do a little research on that. And yes, submit your work.”

She also recommended talking to artists who have been exhibiting their work for years to learn from their experience.

Find more of Pallas’ work online at mpallasstudio.myshopify.com.