The Cayman scenery inspires many an artist and Christel Ibsen is no exception. Best known for her life-like depictions of children at play and her rich seascapes, it is the challenge of capturing the different hues of land, sea and air that she says most inspire her.
“Cayman is an artist’s dream come true …The colours of my palette are richer, my lines more sensual and my motifs exuberant,” she says of painting in Cayman.
Although she has long been involved in the visual arts, painting is a relatively recent passion for the former model, photographer and film maker. The skills and understanding she developed in her early career, however, have all contributed to making her the artist she is today.
Her work as a photographer led her to recognise the connection that existed between communication and imagery. Whatever the topic, she realised, “the written word and speech are both enhanced by the seductiveness of visual symbols.”
It was this desire to tie messages into images that made film making the logical next step.
“Television and film showed me how to focus on the message and how to put it across,” she says.
Silence and painting
The sudden and profound loss of hearing at the height of a high-flying career was the catalyst for her turning her artistic skills to painting.
Plunged into a world of silence, she turned to art as a means of expressing her creativity and, more importantly, allowed her to communicate in a medium where hearing was not essential. “With the silence of deafness came peace and the blissful ability to concentrate on the senses still left,” she says.
The ability of the camera to freeze moments in time has clearly influenced her art, as evidenced by her paintings of children: she expertly captures the innocence, freedom and absence of self consciousness that children exude.
“When I do a commission of a child, I spend many moments getting to know the child and the parents, playing on the beach, showing the child my other paintings and most of all having the child play with my paints and brushes and paint something too.
“Only when that special bond is formed and the child trusts me enough to open up and be natural and relaxed, am I able to capture an image that represents a small core of that child’s personality,” she says.
Although 95 per cent of her hearing was restored thanks to pioneering surgery for a cochlear implant in the late 1990s, this past summer she has experienced some complications which forced her to not only switch off her hearing device, but also prevented her from wearing glasses as they would exert pressure on the affected part of her skull. As a result, she says, “Most of the time I would have to paint in a rather silent and blurred state which, I am speculating, forced me to minimise my signature photo sharp images.”
The result of this she says has been a particularly productive summer, in which her style has evolved and she has seen her art “going in new and more abstract directions of bold, colour close-ups.”
Some of the results of this period of creativity will be exhibited at the Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman as part of the November show at the Gallery.
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