Principle Gallery | 9/2-9/30 | Charleston, SC

Vintage Beauty

Painter Carmen Drake has an eye for the burnished and faded

In her first solo show, painter Carmen Drake shows off her love of antiques and florals in delicate detail. Drake won a contest at Principle Gallery for her portraiture. When she asked the gallery what they wanted to see in a full show, they told her to share the array of her interests. The result is an eclectic mix of portraits, florals and still lifes.

Principle Gallery owner Michele Marceau admires the way Drake “blends fine detail and clean, harmonious color in her peaceful yet complicated paintings. You want to keep looking at her paintings,” Marceau says. “They have a power, which is the mark of a great work of art.”Forsaken, oil on panel, 48 x 23"The painting Fading Roses in Silver combines Drake’s passions. An avid gardener, she loves flowers. The classical scene of a bouquet of pale pink roses dropping their leaves is made all the more wistful by the patinaed silver vase set against the worn paint of a dove-gray wall.
Drake says she feels comfort from older things and handmade items. She grew up in New England, surrounded by historical buildings and places, and studied art at Paier College of Arts in Connecticut. After moving to North Carolina with her first husband, she opened an antiques shop, C.R. Drake Mercantile. She specialized in primitive antiques and reproduction furniture, and also sold her own paintings.Fading Roses in Silver, oil on panel, 12 x 16"

“I’m drawn to antique items because of their stories,” Drake says. “I wonder how many lives an object has lived, how many people have touched it...”

One such item featured in the show at Principle is a tattered silk umbrella. Drake found it in an antique store, a castoff among castoffs. She was captivated. “I wondered how many rainstorms did it endure? How many stolen kisses took place underneath it?” She noticed a detail some passersby may have missed—the tassel. Who took the time to attach that small decoration? Drake bought the umbrella and took it home to paint. As she worked on the painting, she found even deeper resonance in the item. “I was thinking about myself getting older and I found some affinity with the umbrella. It was once a cherished beauty [and] I still found beauty in it.”Jenay, oil on linen panel, 13 x 13"

Drake has won numerous awards for her work including Best Floral in the 2019 Plein Air Salon; Still Life finalist in the 2019 Portrait Society of America Members Only Competition, and second place in the 2020 International Guild of Realism Spring Exhibition. She lives on a farm in rural North Carolina, and works in a studio first built in 1901. When she’s not painting, she can be found in the garden. “I love to dig in the dirt,” she says. “I love the smells of flowers, the bees, the butterflies. I’m in a different world when I’m in my garden.”Red Cloth and Garden Flowers, oil on panel, 24½ x 19¾"