Pauline Eble Campanelli Art Prints

Pauline Eblé Campanelli, (25 January 1943 - 29 November 2001) is a painter whose super-realist still-lifes rival in popularity to Picasso, Dali and Wyeth. Both her work and the work of her husband, Dan, are seldom reviewed, and then generally in obscure publications. They are often absent from prestigious art museums and expensive galleries. But, in the nation's kitchens, living and dining rooms, her precise, loving depictions of household objects are commonplace and treasured. Deeply influenced by her strong belief in Paganism, Campanelli described herself ''not as an artist who paints but as a person who lives.'' Her paintings, she said, were not creations ''but communications of the essence of that experience.'' Her serene paintings and the spiritual books that she authored showed her dedication of the ancient, simple ways of her rustic, noble life, living and painting with Dan in a restored stone house in rural New Jersey . Campanelli, wheelchair-bound from being stricken with polio at three, painted standing on crutches in an 8x10-foot studio that was once a tiny bedroom. The light streamed through a rippled North window, the sort of light she thought Rembrandt liked. One is reminded of the Shakers in the simplicity and spirituality of her works. Her later paintings were starkly characterized by white backgrounds. She worked very slowly, averaging only about six paintings a year. As an example of her dedication, if she painted a ball of yarn, it meticulously showed each thread. She painted any flowers last, in order not to be hurried, showing their hues and veins in the petals, even with hands permanently cramped and twisted from the affliction that eventually and sadly took her life.