Caroline Belanger
Round the Campfire, 2023
Mixed media on paper
16 x 16 x 2 in.
(40.6 x 40.6 x 5.1 cm)

Bespoke projects can be such an adventure, and this was certainly the inspiration for Round the Campfire. The challenge: make a piece for an adventurer who loves camping. The need-to-haves: blue and white. The place to begin: I honestly had no idea!

So I went back to basics. I started the process by studying how other artists have depicted the experience of camping and, in particular, how they have illustrated tents. I then completed a few preliminary sketches of my own and played around with transforming them into graphics on my computer. I took these and started out with a moonscape featuring little tents clustered around a campfire in the foreground. But it felt too overt and not in keeping with my style. I wanted something more abstract. However, I really liked the silhouette that I had created for the tents, especially when I recalled a Finnish cobalt-and-white ceramic plate at my mother’s house. Fast-forward to a few hours later and, ultimately, the composition to your left is where I landed—to everyone’s delight!