Featured Artist Danielle Trudeau

Canadian artist Danielle Trudeau’s use of light and shadow as well as surrealism add emotion to her paintings and dramatizes her subjects’ inherent beauty. Visit her website to view more of her art.

 

 

One of my favorite features of artwork is the ability to tell a story without words, to instill emotion in the viewer without an obvious cue.

 

 

This is my goal for my own creations, to invoke a passion in the viewer with natural creatures and symbolic images.

 

 

Throughout my life I was surrounded by nature, and its beauty was the first inspiration I had for creating artwork. As my style grew, it started pulling away from traditional realism and developed some flares of surrealism.

 

 

Embracing this, I created my first series of work titled “Calm Within Chaos,” which explores the subject of hidden inner emotions as well as two qualities that govern our world: calm and chaos. We each define our own versions of calm and chaos, and finding a balance is the key.

 

 

Too much calm doesn’t propel us to grow and explore, and too much chaos distracts us, preventing us from securing our focus. As this series grows I learn more about myself, and have hopes that others will learn more about their own balance between calm and chaos as well.

 

 

I enjoy exploring topics that contain two complimentary angles, such as calm and chaos, and light and darkness. Dramatic lighting is an important feature in my work, as the strong contrast can reveal hidden textures and secrets that the subjects have, as well it adds a certain element of excitement to a piece.

 

 

I’ve enjoyed exploring different mediums, but find myself settling on a combination of acrylic paint and oil paint, which are often used in conjunction on the same piece.

 

 

Use of acrylic paint allows me to create fluid backgrounds, which contain both simplicities and complexities, depending on your frame of view. These fluid backgrounds provide me with the perfect foundation to build on, pulling details out of certain areas to create something that settles between life-like and dream-like.

 

 

Oil paint allows me to add a certain richness, as well its long drying time gives extra time to play with the streams of colour, blending and restructuring alongside the fluid paint as needed.

 

Artist Danielle Trudeau invites you to follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

 

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