Under all illusions of civility, our fear

The rather mild dynamic painting that I started on Tuesday took flight in a strange and scary way as I listened to the EU referendum outcome. Look closely into the dark space and you will find fear creeping out. It's in all of us, the nightmare fear of losing what matters. And when it insists on being felt, that fear often creates an Other to blame; labelling and blaming can mark the start of violence and hatred.

The politics and rhetoric of the referendum were shamefully misleading, even dishonest. The outcome was shocking. But it was the new emphasis on the Other in social media posts that was most upsetting. The social divisions being pointed out, highlighted, increased: older people were being made Other; immigrants being made Other; non-Londoners being made Other.

I let the horrible image emerge in the painting so I could face it and find out what it was telling me. And I wrote about it on my Empathy blog here

Artists have an important job now to remind people of how the world can be, and of the power of our every choice.

On a day like today

I sat by the Baltic sea last weekend with a German couple and a good friend from Berlin. We talked about our families and discovered that our grandfathers could have been fighting each other in WW1 - lives ruined by nerve gas and killing. Our fathers and uncles were each physically and emotionally damaged by having to fight in WW2, in Russia and Burma. We thought of our sons, appreciated the peacetime we have lived in, and hoped that this generation would not lose their awareness of how much this matters.

More existentialism... and art

We are our projects, says Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex ... Her words on women artists are challenging me to speak more loudly about my projects. Her words on women artists are becoming a new project..

"... what singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other; an attempt is made to freeze her as an object and doom her to immanance."

Who is making me up?    acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron, 2015

enlarging the idea of negative space

The idea of negative space has fascinated me since I first heard about it. It changes the way you think about painting when you stop trying to paint 'things' and paint the space instead.

In The Wonder World for Enid series, grey paint was used to make negative space that created flower-like shapes.

Sometimes negative space is "the space between", which also suggests metaphorical interpretations, and reminds me of my research into how people talking together cross the gap of understanding that lies between them.

Recently, I've been dipping into French existentialist philosophy (prompted by Sarah Bakewell's excellent book At the Existentialist Cafe). There I found a further extension of negative space, into 'specific nothingness'. This idea from Jean Paul Sartre captures that feeling of something or someone actively absent. For example, if you think you have a whole bar of chocolate in the cupboard, but when you get there you find only half a bar, the missing half is what draws your attention. And in a more serious vein, Bakewell writes of friends of Sartre and de Beauvoir who they would meet in the cafe but who then disappeared during the war - their absence in the cafe would be strongly present.

I have been thinking a lot about this idea of "the presence of absence" and applying it to my experience here in Berlin.

Yesterday I showed a new audio-visual piece on the theme at our group workshop. It included some exploratory collages made after watching the film Jezebel (from 1938). There is definitely more to be done with the presence of absence.

The air is full

of fluffy white seeds from the trees that pile up on the pavements

of swifts swooping in formation over the roof tops and between buildings

and of rumbling, cracking thunder

of bubbles blown by a child

and of ideas from painting, reading, writing.

My task now is to assemble them into an exhibition.

That kind of day (continues)

The painting I showed you last time has been through several more stages.

Some orange hoops crept in one day.

For a week it shared the studio/kitchen space with some flowers from the market. The lilac and gorse died more quickly than the aquilegia.

The aquilegia wanted in to the painting. It was added with a long thin brush and black paint, blossoms and leaves printed on with thick paint. And then it asked for a pale background to stand out against.

The painting sat, taped onto the board, for a few more days, not feeling finished. Then it was time for strength and determination to add yellow. Four yellows in fact: cadmium yellow deep, lemon yellow, process yellow, cadmium yellow light. Perhaps that was the gorse.

The orange shifted tone. And more indigo, always more indigo, dripping.

It's still sitting, waiting. Perhaps it is finished.

That kind of day

My dynamic paintings usually take several days to work to an endpoint. Today I have been adding to one that I started a few days ago. It was already pretty busy in terms of colours and strokes:

The changes I made today were about light and dark. I used indigo to darken some strokes and places, and then white and emerald green to lighten others. Can you spot the differences?

It was a meditative process that took me deep into the painting to add contrast to small areas. I love that process!

The painting is called "That kind of day". And it is probably not yet finished.

The fall of the cherry blossom

Spring in Berlin was cold for several weeks. The cherry blossom came out and glowed in the new light. Then one day it was hot. That was the beginning of the fall.

Sometimes - quite often, in fact - the street offers abstract compositions to inspire future paintings. Often the organic shapes in my paintings contrast with hard-edged lines or strips, like the falling blossom blown against kerbs and walls.

Untitled. Acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, Lynne Cameron, 2016.

A Fierce Following

This is the artist statement I wrote for the pop-up exhibition in April. Some days I need to read it again.

Walking in a changed light

I didn't know why I wanted to go for a walk this morning. Or why I needed to know. I found out by setting off.

In the four weeks I was away, spring came to Berlin. Blossom, bright green new leaves, longer evenings - I had noticed these changes immediately. Walking, I realised that the light has changed qualitatively too. The sun is higher in the sky. It makes sharper shadows. It shines in different places on familiar streets.

Unexpected resonance between the cobbled pavement and a crocodile skin accordion case (what else?) outside the antique shop:

I needed to walk to set myself back into the place as it is now.

My dancing mind. Acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron, 2016.

Labelling the world and the spaces between

I was invited to write a short piece about labels and what they do to our understanding of the world. I decided to focus on unlabelled 'spaces between'...

Lost in place acrylic on canvas, 50 x 65 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2013

Here's how the article begins...

I arrived in Berlin to work with a new label, as “artist-in-residence”. It is a beautifully vague label that finds many different instantiations in the cross-over between art and organisations. Its core meaning is only that an artist is resident for a period of time in a particular place and makes art. The art may happen in situ or in the months and years afterwards. The art may relate directly to the place and what happens there, or it may be more loosely connected to it and influenced by it. The art project is sometimes pre-determined but more often, as with my post in the Cinepoetics centre at the Freie Universität in Berlin, is left open as a space to be filled. In my work as a professor of applied linguistics, I gained a reputation for rigorous and precise analytic work, all categories carefully defined and labelled. In my work as an artist, I love the looseness, the spaces between, and the reluctance to label. ...

....  you can read the full article here  

Sorting the back catalogue

Coming back to my cottage, I've re-found the paintings I left here last October. As I prepare to set off back to Berlin, I've been getting these out and taking a long look with refreshed eyes.

12 works were taken to a lovely new space at nearby Claydon House courtyard for a small exhibition in the workshop of my local framers. They put a box frame around one of the Landscape of Possibility paintings, which I think makes it look really good.

Paintings from two or three years back have to pass my 3-way test in order to stay on the website and be considered for future exhibitions: they must still 'catch the eye' so that a quick glance wants to look more deeply; they must mesh with my current style and ideas; they must be technically good enough by my current standards.

Paintings from the 'back catalogue' that pass my test will be coming with me to Berlin. The rest will be painted over or given away.

I've also enjoyed showing the new work in the pop-up exhibition, and selling the first dynamic painting to a new friend who's moving on in her life and wanted to mark the transition. What a lovely reason to buy a painting!

Dynamic paintings in the domestic gallery aka my cottage

Taking the work out there

After a long period of intense painting since last October, I am on the road with my work now. Taking it out there for those who are waiting to see it.

This one is going to Tig Gallery on the west coast of Scotland.

Buried treasure. Acrylic on watercolour paper. 41 x 60 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2016.

This one will be part of the pop-up exhibition I'm holding later this week (contact me for details if you'd like to come and haven't received an invitation!)

The passionate fury of making peace. Acrylic on watercolour paper. 41 x 60 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2016.

And here are some of the things I love about the English countryside, even if spring is cold and windy: a red kite soaring, an old village church, hedge laying, primroses and white violets on a bank.

And the driving! Berlin to UK, with the help of my wonderful brother. Scotland. Back to Berlin - or maybe I'll take the plane next time?

Signs of spring

A wander around the neighbourhood today. The sun is shining, almost to ground level, and it is even feeling a little warm.

It is beginning to feel different. Cafes are putting out their tables on the pavements (with blankets), summer clothes are appearing in the shops, and, strongest sign of all, the ice cream shop has re-opened!

Back in my apartment, I am sorting paintings for galleries and exhibitions, in Berlin and in the UK.

Behind the Moon  acrylic on paper, 43 x 60 cm, Lynne Cameron 2016.

Languaging

A tooth filling fell out eating good German bread. The dentist spoke enough English to explain; my friend translated the forms.

My skin dried out like a piece of old paper in the dry Berlin cold. The cosmetic skin-care lady and I managed to understand each other with her English, my German, and lots of pointing.

My car tyres needed air. I couldn't work out how to use the machine in the petrol station, so I gathered enough German to explain my problem. Helpful young man rushed out of his shop to do it for me.

We are languaging.

Snow shadows. Photo collage, déchirage, acrylic paint, on canvas panel. Lynne Cameron, 2016

adding words

Here's an experiment in sound and vision. Play the sound while looking at the painting. These are the words I wrote during and after painting. Tell me what you think!

We are this. And we are that.  acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron, 2016.

Launching new paintings

After hours of work sizing photos and making webpages, I'm pleased to launch a new look gallery over on my Paintings pages. Click here for speedy access to the new work: Dynamic paintings

I've been working on these paintings for over a year now, but it's the art residency here in Berlin that has allowed them the time to mature into a body of work. I hope you enjoy them!

We are this, and we are that. acrylic on watercolour paper, 43 x 60cm. Lynne Cameron, 2016.

Each painting responds to what's going on in my life in the world, through colour and gesture.

From Potsdamer Platz to Zoo Palast

To get to the cinema, I had to take the 200 bus from Potsdamer Platz. At the bus stop, I watched a well dressed young man carefully place his Red Bull can on top of a metal box, rather than in the nearby bin. I wondered if he was coming back for it later, leaving it for someone else, or constructing a street sculpture out of the grey metals.

At the bus stop I read a history plaque about Varian Fry.

He rescued Marc Chagall! And then I imagined being one of those surplus intellectuals who failed to be rescued. And shivered.

The bus stopped before my stop and turned us out. Roads were closed. Police cars lined the streets. Barriers blocked the pavements. It turned out that Israei Prime Minister Netanyahu is in town for talks about peace talks.

I was escorted through the barriers to the cinema, where I watched the new film of Heidi, one of my favourite childhood books. Maybe the series of sad films that I had chosen at the film festival was influencing my viewing but there were parts of this lovely film where I found myself shivering for the vulnerability of the child - as the parson checked her body for illness, as she was left alone with her unknown grandfather, and as she was taken away from him to the city. I seem to find a terrible combination of innocence, vulnerability, and loss everywhere I turn just now.

More children in the U-Bahn station to go home.

Back in my studio, I painted and wrote furiously about these feelings:

We tried them once; they broke our teeth. acrylic on paper, 43 x 60 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2016.