Around four, when the room goes flat and grey, the gate in this picture is still lit.
A garden gate at dusk. Wrought iron, deep blue-indigo behind it, warm amber coming through the bars from a cottage window somewhere past them. Green ivy, grey stone, a thin violet line in the shadows.
Look once. Then step back
Where the iron bars cross their own shadow, a heron is standing. Neck, beak, one folded wing. Nobody painted a bird. It is only the gap between the metal and the dark shape it throws. Look straight at it and it falls apart into bars again. Step back three feet and it returns.
Our critic Ruby put it this way: “The hidden heron silhouette emerges beautifully, rewarding a closer look.” Kids find it in about ten seconds. Adults take longer and are far more pleased with themselves.
Carmen glazes dark to light, so the glow sits inside the picture instead of on top of it. Dusk light, every time, never noon. And always a small element hidden for the second look. She will not tell you what it is. She will ask if you found it. “I paint the half-remembered, not the imagined. There is a difference.”
Getting it on the wall
Matte canvas over a solid wood frame, an inch and a quarter deep, with the image wrapping the edges so there is no bare white strip at the sides. It arrives stretched and ready to hang: one nail, two minutes, no framer and no glass bill you did not plan for. Matte surface, so a lamp or a window opposite gives you the gate back rather than your own reflection.
It is portrait. Most people take the 18×24 (46×61 cm) at $149. The 12×16 (30×41 cm) is $129, and the 24×32 (61×81 cm) is $229 for a wider wall. A useful rule: aim for about two-thirds the width of whatever sits underneath it. A high quality print of a digital artwork, made to order in up to ten business days, free shipping in the continental US. The price on the work is the price.
One honest thing
This one wants to be asked about. If you want a picture that says all of itself at first glance, this is the wrong one.
If it is right, take it home. Still thinking? Go see what else Carmen has hidden, or follow her and you will meet the next one first.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.