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Quesnel rancher and painter finds inspiration all around her

Quesnel’s Cecile Cameron paints from her experiences.
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There’s a corner of Cecile Cameron’s brain where her creativity lives. It’s a lively place just waiting for that precious time when she can let the artist in her flow. The rest of the time she is a busy frontier woman, wife and mother, and that takes up most of her waking hours.

Ranch work is honest, hard work and certainly in summer the days are long but the work is physically rewarding. Cecile looks forward to winter when there’s a little more time for her passion. She sees her art as a balance to the other aspects of her life, and quite therapeutic.

“I’ve always loved to draw, I loved colouring with crayons and such as a child,” Cecile said.

“Now I’ve graduated to graphite and special drawing coloured pencils.”

Her favourite subject is horses and other farm creatures. Her approach to painting is that first and foremost she must get the eyes right. If they aren’t right, she abandons the project.

“That’s where I put most of my effort, is in the eyes.”

In many of her horse pictures, Cecile confronts the challenge of creating movement in her work; whether the horse is logging or racing the barrel circuit, they are mostly in motion, and that can be difficult to express. Cecile admits she’d rather default to less movement than too much, although its always a judgement call.

She also spends a lot of time getting the balance of dark and light just right, especially in her black and white pieces.

With her work so far, Cecile has chosen to have prints made then stretched on canvas as finished product ready to sell. One of her favourite and best works is of a border collie at rest, waiting for his master to make the call to work.

You are struck by the intense eyes and the understated tension which exudes from the normally high-energy canine.

Her rendering of this dog is an excellent example of her style and abilities.

Other examples of Cecile’s work are on display and for sale at Triple L Trophies and Engraving, upstairs at 345 St. Laurent Ave.

As summer begins to wane in the Cariboo, Cecile is looking to the winter months and her return to art. She’s considering a ‘beasts of burden’ series with a Barkerville backdrop, possibly covering all four seasons.

She can be contacted through Triple L Trophies and Engravings’ Lisa Larsen for access to other works of her art.