A portrait of Mrs. Blue

It started with a bowl of mandarin oranges and lemons that looked so beautiful, I couldn't resist grabbing my camera. A dozen shots later, I had lots of photos but nothing that wowed me. So I started playing with the fruit and the bowl and got this photo. Wow! 

Copyright 2011 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, or steal.      

I loved the whimsy of the face in the fruit bowl, and it inspired me to spend the afternoon in my studio. An upcoming art exhibit is all about food and art. I'm guessing there are going to be a lot of traditional still lifes on display, which is why I'm going to submit the following for consideration by the exhibit's jurors. It is decidedly less stuffy.  Art shouldn't have to be serious. I had fun with this.   

 Copyright 2011 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, or steal.

I painted the background and then on separate paper, painted the oranges, lemon, and peppers. I cut them out and used them as collage elements to make the face. I was ridiculously pleased with how well my oranges came out. I wish you could see all the detail in my lemon. I titled this painting Mrs. Blue Winters in Florida. I'll mat and frame it this week.

Art Journal--October Harvest Moon

Copyright 2010 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, or reproduce. 

Art Journal

   I Copyright 2010 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

Heart Topography 

A variation on a piece I created shortly before my surgery in April. Husband and daughter pronounced it "creepy." 

Art Journal

Copyright 2010 Veronca McCabe Deschambault. Do not copy, cut, or paste

No words. Just the useless flutter of my heart and a longing to rise above this, to be free. 

A collage inspired by a poem

from Stray Birds

Stray birds of summer

come to my window

to sing and fly away.

And yellow leaves of autumn,

which have no songs,

flutter and fall there with a sigh.

 Rabindranath Tagore

(translated from Bengali to English)

This collage was produced in response to a call for artists to produce a piece of work related to a piece of literature. At the end of this month, I'll submit it for consideration to be included in a juried art exhibit. I'm not sure it's up to gallery standards, but I enjoyed making it.

It's too large to fit on my scanner, so I was forced to use my point-and-shoot camera to photograph it and I feel much has been lost in translation of the image. I was trying to express the relationship between the poet's worlds of summer and autumn, one a season of song, another a season of sighs. I was also interested in capturing the movement of time, the predicatability of the arrival of the seasons versus the sense of impermanence that comes with transitions (the stray birds that come and go, the leaves that fall and flutter away). There's a bit of "white magic" falling and moving through the painting like a sprinkling of Divine pixie dust. And my tree is rooted and yet floating in the composition. It's hard to see that in the photo,