The moth is one second from touching the glass.
It crossed the whole dark yard for this — one small lit window in a wall of ivy. Inside, a lamp is on and somebody is home. Outside, the leaves have gone violet and indigo with the very last of the light, and the moth hangs there in the amber, tiny, drawn in like everything else.
Now look at it a second time
Carmen builds the ordinary part first. Window, leaves, dusk. Then she hides a second picture in it, and she hides it last. It is never drawn as an object — it lives only in the shape the shadows and the lit glass leave behind, so you can look straight at it and miss it completely. Most adults do, for a while. Children find it in about four seconds and then they will not stop pointing at it.
She glazes dark to light, which is why the lamp seems switched on behind the picture instead of painted onto the front of it. As Ruby put it: “The glowing amber window and deep violet shadows create a luminous, mysterious atmosphere that invites discovery.” Carmen won’t tell you what’s in there. She only ever asks whether you found it.
What happens once it’s up
People walk over and lean in. This is the one guests get their nose close to. It’s best somewhere you pass at night — a hallway, the top of the stairs, a cabin bedroom — where the glow in the picture and the lamp in the room quietly agree with each other.
Getting it on the wall
It’s a high quality canvas print of a digital painting, stretched over solid wood an inch and a quarter deep, with the image running round the sides so there’s nothing to fill in. It arrives ready to hang: one nail, two minutes, no framer and no surprise bill. The surface is matte, so a window or a lamp opposite gives you the painting back instead of a reflection. Made to order, so nobody else on your street has this one — allow up to ten business days to make it, plus delivery, and shipping in the continental US is free.
The 20 x 16 inch landscape (50.8 x 40.6 cm) is the size most people take, and it’s $149. There’s a smaller and a larger option either side of it.
One honest thing
This is a dark picture with one warm light in it. If you want bright, airy and pale, it will fight your room. If you like a wall that keeps something back, it fits the first day and gets better.
Take it home if that’s you. If you’d rather sit with it, look through the rest of Carmen’s hidden-dusk pieces — or follow her, and you’ll see the next one before the rest of us do.
