Four in the afternoon, and the room goes quiet in a good way. The light in this picture doesn’t come from your ceiling. It comes from inside the painting, low and amber, the way water looks just after the sun has gone.
An ordinary bridge. Still water underneath. One figure crossing, small, not in a hurry. That’s all it is for the first ten seconds.
Then somebody spots it
The bridge and its own reflection don’t just mirror each other. Together they make a shape. A keyhole, sitting there in the dark water, hiding in the space between the arch and the arch upside down. Once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it, and the little figure stops being a person on a walk. He’s about to unlock something he hasn’t noticed yet.
Carmen Delacroix builds these the same way every time. She paints an ordinary quiet place first, glazing dark to light until one source of glow sits behind everything. Then she hides the second picture last, and she will not tell you what it is. A critic put it well: the keyhole “invites the viewer to linger, transforming an ordinary scene into a playful mystery.” Kids find it in about four seconds. Adults take longer, then get annoyed about it.
Getting it up
It’s a high quality print of a digital painting on museum-grade archival matte paper with pigment inks. Non-reflective, so a lamp or a window opposite gives you the water back instead of a bright white blob. Printed edge to edge with no white border, so it looks right pinned up bare or slid straight into a frame you already own. It arrives rolled in a tube, made to order, which means nobody else on your road has this one. Free shipping in the continental US.
Most people take the 16×20 (40.6 x 50.8 cm) at $49. The 11×14 is $29 for a hallway or a bunk-room wall, and the 18×24 is $69 if you want people to find the keyhole from the sofa.
One honest thing
This is dusk. Violet, indigo, deep water. It’s a slow picture, not a loud one. If you want something bright and graphic that hits from across the room, this isn’t it.
If you want the one your family argues about, take it home. Or have a look at the rest of what Carmen has hidden — follow her, and you’ll see the next one before the puzzle gets solved.
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.
Rooftops Resting Gold – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
Witness Barely Waking – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19
Key Beneath the Moon – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19
Window Keeping Vigil – Carmen Delacroix | Digital Download$19
Glass Holding Moths – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print Price range: $29 through $69
Willow Sleeping Below – Carmen Delacroix | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
