In Search of Rousseau



"In Search of Rousseau" 18x24 Colored Pencil on Sanded Panel


This colored pencil painting which I completed a few months ago has been juried into the 18th annual CPSA International Exhibit. It was done as an homage to Henri Rousseau. For those of you who might not be familiar with the artist Rousseau, he began painting in his 40's in the time of Matisse. He was inspired by the exotic plants he saw at the Paris botanical gardens and by photos from books about Africa. He felt he had stepped into a dream when in the presence of the strange and beautiful plants and sought to project the mood to his paintings. Rousseau painted in a primitive, naive manner that was ridiculed by other artists - though it is thought he was not aware of their disdain for his paintings. His work was later held in higher regard and Picasso supposedly rescued one of his paintings from a street vendor who was selling it as a canvas that could be reused by artists seeking inexpensive painting supplies.
My painting depicts a fancy lady - to represent the Paris elite - on a quest through a primitive, naive jungle landscape in search of the artist Rousseau. A composite of Rousseau images follows.


In my next blog, I will compare the painting that got selected for the exhibit and the painting that didn't, and a little about art competitions.

All the best, Linda

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