Stones Breathing Slowly – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print

One lantern, and everything else in the picture is dusk.

Your eye goes straight to it because Carmen glazed the whole painting from dark to light, so the warm amber seems to come from inside the paper rather than sitting on top of it. A harbour breakwater, grey stone, green ivy, warm wood, water giving the sky back. Nothing unusual. Just the last hour of light.

Then you look again

The stones are not only stones. The way they are placed, and the way the shadows fall between them, builds the long arc of a whale’s back rising out of the breakwater. Nothing is painted onto the rocks. It is made entirely from the gaps. Charlotte, one of our critics, put it this way: “This artwork delights with a hidden whale elegantly surfacing through the breakwater’s form.” It scored 8.33 out of 10.

Carmen never tells you it is there. She builds the ordinary place first and hides the second picture last. “I paint the half-remembered, not the imagined. There is a difference.” And always dusk light, every time, never noon. Children find the whale in about four seconds. Adults take a week, then find something else.

Living with it

Hang it in the hall, or above the spot where people stand and talk. The glow holds up under a lamp at night, and the matte, non-reflective paper means a window opposite gives you the harbour back instead of your own ceiling light.

It is a high quality print of a digital artwork on archival matte paper, printed edge to edge with no white border, so it looks finished pinned up bare or dropped into a frame you already own. It arrives rolled in a tube. Portrait, 18 x 24 in (46 x 61 cm) is the size most people take, $49. The 12 x 16 in (30 x 41 cm) is $29 and the 24 x 32 in (61 x 81 cm) is $69. Made to order, up to ten business days, free shipping in the continental US. The price you see is the price.

One honest thing

If you want a picture that explains itself at first glance, this is not it, and it will quietly annoy you. If you like being asked about your walls, take it home. Or look through the rest of Carmen’s harbours first, and follow her if you want to see the next hidden thing before anyone else does.

One is a piece. Two is a set. Three is a collection.

Almost nobody stops at one. A second work by the same hand turns a wall into a pairing. A third turns it into something you chose rather than something you bought. There are 6 other works by Carmen Delacroix available.

Descent Holding Time – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print$129 – $229Price range: $129 through $229Fingers Among Grasses – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19Bend Concealing Swan – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19House Watching Back – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19Branches Learning Touch – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print$129 – $229Price range: $129 through $229Post Casting Heron – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19