As an artist I want to create art that makes people smile, remember, inspire and ask the hard questions. Art is subjective and means different things to different people. For me, art is personal. It is what my heart and soul calls out to, and what my brain sees. My art is for me is reflective of who I am as well as who and what I project out into the world. I want to create something pleasant for the eye to see and for the mind to contemplate. The most challenging aspect of my art is the use of light and shadow to engage the viewer into the scene to evoke a memory of place and time.
Though I have worked, and continue to work, in many mediums, oil paint is my primary medium as I love the versatility and blending ability of oil paints. I enjoy painting and drawing various subjects. I love the stories that old and vintage vehicles tell me, buildings that have withstood the test of time, windows that reflect back to us the landscape or the view of its inner world, flowers and the landscape for their innate beauty.
My subject matter varies, but all of it reflects my direction and flow that my creativity takes. Right now my focus is windows. The central focus of the window paintings is the windows, how they capture light and color or distort reflections. What do we see in windows or is there something to be seen in them? What is it that we don’t see? Windows can be mysterious, such as old, wavy, smudgy & vintage windows, or clear shop windows. They can be mundane or sublime. Windows are fragile, yet strong. Windows can have a story to tell us if we observe them. Is someone peering at the viewer from behind the glass? Or am I the one peering out onto the landscape? I try to capture all of that in these paintings featuring windows.
I'm also working on an Icon series, starting with New Mexico Icons. I paint a window that an artist have looked through and then I paint a view of the area that the artist may have seen. For example, I just finished a painting of a view from Georgia O'Keefe's window with a view of three of her favorite New Mexico landscapes. My vision is to cover as many artist that lived in New Mexico as I can. Then I will move on to other American artists.
I currently have artworks in collections across the U. S. as well as in Spain and Germany.
Carmen M. Badeau - Artist