Peaches by Helen Lundeberg, 1976

Helen Lundeberg, a lesser-known female artist who worked in Southern California, spent the better part of six decades working primarily in acrylic paints on canvas. The bulk of Lundeberg’s works capture the ideals of the post-surrealist movement, where her subject matter – while still rooted in perception of reality - was less autonomous and more scientific. This is reflected in her choices of color and the way she uses space as an organizing principle in her compositions. It is important to note that the colors in each of the compositions, while cool, are not cold and that keeps the general mood neutral, allowing for the viewer to form their own emotional response overtime. In both Illusions and Peaches, Lundeberg uses a muted, cool, color palette in order to render relatively simple compositions of a still life of a table setting or peaches and a paper bag, respectively.
Scene of a Dream is more abstract in terms of the subject matter. Instead of being a still life, the viewer is placed in a hallway like space looking towards the vanishing point that is placed just off center, to the right. Even with a less obvious subject matter, the piece still remains neutral in regards to the colors being used.
Regarding space, Illusions, Peaches, and Scene of Dream are all mathematically and scientifically rendered. Her brushwork is highly precise and she arranges the objects in each piece so they balance one another so nothing feels to be more visually weighted than the other. In all of the pieces, there is a sense of illusionistic space where everything is balanced and relatively static, again helping to create a neutral viewing experience. Where Lundeberg’s pieces start to unfold into a thing of brilliance is within the conscious mechanisms of the mind. It is the viewers own beliefs and emotions that begin to shift the images to be something more than just a fallen bag with peaches, or a still life on a table, or a hallway-like landscape. It is not the subject that creates the meaning, nor is it the color; rather, it is the viewer. - Erin Lascot

Selected Bibliography
Fort, Ilene Susan, ed. Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective. Laguna Art Museum, 2016. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective, Laguna Art Museum, February 21-May 30, 2016.