Camille Engel
My Inspiration
The Parthenon Museum of Nashville engaged me to create an exhibition of 30 realism paintings depicting the Tennessee state symbols. I was inspired to use my skill for realism to create clever, non-textbook compositions for my exhibition. The Way the Cookie Crumbles represents “milk,” the Tennessee state beverage, and was the first painting created in my new series of Trompe l’oeil/surrealism paintings. Although several ideas on how to depict milk in a non-textbook realism painting competed in my head, the idea of the classic snack of a glass of creamy milk with a stack of chocolate chip cookies won out. I added a touch of surrealism, the jettison crumbs, to stir the viewer’s senses with memories of this legendary snack.
My Design Strategy
My design strategy was to create a brilliant trick of the eye combining surrealism with Trompe l’oeil. In this painting, I show that a tasty photo has been taped to a weathered board and suggest that the photo is coming to life by depicting the cookie crumbs tumbling out of the photo, casting shadows as they fall to the ground. When The Way the Cookie Crumbles hung in the museums, I delighted to watch viewers lean very close to the wall to answer their curiosity... are the tape and the photo dimensional or part of the flat painting? In truth, I have painted every last shadow, crumb, crease and indentation. I seek to capture the richness of life and revel in capturing the painstaking details.
My Working Process
I’ve come to learn that my intuitive, selftaught style of painting is called “indirect painting” in which the final effects are built up gradually by placing several layers of paint, one over the other, the upper layers modifying, but not altogether concealing, the lower layers. Many of the Dutch Masters including Vermeer, Van Eyck, El Greco and Rembrandt utilized the optical effects of indirect processes.
Personally, I begin with many photographic references to study my subject from all angles. I choose a blank white canvas or Gessobord panel; sketch my subject lightly with pencil either by hand or by the use of an artograph; spray fixative over my pencil sketch (otherwise the oil paint will wipe the pencil away); and begin my underpainting then the five to seven subsequent layers.
Contact Details
» Email: camille@camille-engel.com » Website: www.camille-engel.com