Portrait of an Artist: Elaine Charach Campbell

Elaine Campbell departed from her usual subjects of flowers and landscapes to create a series of four mixed-media paintings with face masks which she calls “My Messengers of Gratefulness to Ward off Bitterness (on the cover), Resentme

nt, Indifference and Self Pity.” As I viewed these four paintings, I was immediately attracted and mystified by their beauty and complexity. The face mask is typically worn for protection in rituals and ceremonies. We all need some defense from these four negative emotions.

Elaine lives in Vancouver and spends her winters on the island of Kauai. She has studied art, interior design, graphic design and printmaking in Canada, USA and in Italy. Inspired by her surroundings, she expresses her reactions to her environment through elements of line, colour and texture. Early in life Elaine discovered the magical force of spontaneous expression;“It is so deep a passion that I cannot imagine life without making art.I make art wherever I am and produce a diversity of styles and mediums ‘on-site’.

Painting is my way of ‘keeping my story alive’.” Her art is held in corporate and private collections in Canada, USA, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel.

Her paintings reflect her philosophy “My artwork is about the journey; the experience of making art. I always strive to retain the excitement and connection I feel with the subject.”

In today’s arbitrary and less-schooled environment, there’s a valuable technique that is readily self-taught… The first step involves the casual placing of the approximate shape in as few strokes as possible. The second step is to re-examine what you did — often after a bit of time and through squinted eyes — and ask yourself what form the shape or object can most easily become…forms stay fresh because they are not tortured or cajoled out of photographic reference. For many of us, the most effective illusion of form will have evolved from what was suggested in the strokes of the first step (The Painter’s Key, Nov. 22, 2016).