Residency reflections 6: Painting and other arts

At the end of my residency at the Berghof Foundation we held an event to celebrate what we’d made and discuss what we’d learnt.

It was interesting for me throughout my stay to hear about the creative activities of Berghof staff and how creativity inhabits people’s lives. I came with my painting practice and poetry; other people had experience in, and love for other art forms: theatre, photography, music. In our conversation, we talked about the performative arts and how they might offer ways of working with others to reframe situations and emotions.

Painting can be performative and collaborative, but is often a more private and silent activity. It is non-verbal, and there’s a power, I find, in losing oneself in colour, line and form. While busy with the material and mixing of paint with water, the body occupied with brushing and looking, the mind is quietened for a time and returns to some kind of equilibrium. From the time ‘lost in painting’, we can emerge invigorated and somehow more balanced. The activity is, in itself, restorative; the end result of the painting serves as a reminder of process and is not required to be more than that.

An edited summary of our conversation can be found here

https://berghof-foundation.org/news/transformation-through-art-talk-with-lynne-cameron

Meanwhile, the discussion around art, creativity, and conflict transformation continues …

An occupation of the body. Lynne Cameron, 2022. Acrylic, pencil and charcoal on collaged handwriting, 61 x 84 cm.

Residency reflections continued: Maintaining a creative practice

The residency at the Berghof Foundation was conceived in the belief that there is creative power within each of us and that this power can benefit the work that we are committed to. Sometimes our creative power gets silenced, put down perhaps by thoughtless words from a childhood teacher or lost in the pressures of life. I aimed to nourish and re-activate this creative power through various hands-on activities - shifting to a visual mode through drawing and painting with the hands can release something in people who spend their days engrossed in words on screens. On a wider scale, we considered the work of conflict transformation as a creative practice.

I shared the shape of my creative practice as a painter and invited people to consider their own work in these terms:

• how the physical space of the studio makes a difference, what’s on the walls, the materials, my tables and easel

• my use of images, sketchbooks, photos

• how my practice is about the intangible too: commitment, values, intention, life choices

• how rituals and routines support making art

• the daily practice of journal writing, reading, intuitive painting, and time in the studio space

• how the practice is nourished with gallery visits, books, talks

• influences on my work of other painters and philosophers

After reflecting on their own work, we discussed aspects of the physical space in which conflict transformation happens, the meeting rooms people sit in, the food offered. Every aspect incorporates a message to participants and contributes to the conditions in which dialogue happens.

We talked about visualising ideas to simplify and to adjust thinking.

And arising as perhaps most important was the question of how time and space for creative, non-linear thinking might be incorporated in the pressurised processes of conflict transformation and peace-building.

I labelled this idea ‘the imaginal space’ and next time, I’ll share our deeper dive into what happens there.

Reflections on my artist residency with the Berghof Foundation 3: Creating found poems

Given a page, a poem is found by letting words jump out to meet the eyes.

Then moving up and down the page, adding words or omitting them to let a new text take shape.

A different text that echoes with the original. Forged from metaphors. Allowing the richness of multiple and implied meanings.

 Isolating the words out of the page and attending to the shape of the found poem.

Adding form and colour to re-connect the words into the new whole.

Sustained and repeated attention to each word and its position in the text – we keep the rule of reading left to right from the top, while breaking others, upending grammar, and shifting focus.

 Re-composing fragments of a careful text, inspired by the work and composed for clarity.

Choosing the force of the new.

Almost-an-artist-residency: How did we get here?

I have arrived in my beloved Berlin to start work with the Berghof Foundation for the next three weeks. This residency emerged from my desire to experience more of the rich working alongside in dialogue that I became aware was possible during the two years (2015-17) I spent in Berlin as artist-in-residence and Senior Research Fellow at Cinepoetics Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität. I discovered then the deep delight of painting alongside people who were engaged in a quite different world (in this case, film theory) and yet who were willing to explore connections with my practice. My work was invigorated – by the city, by the films we watched together, by our discussions about metaphor. I invited people to share my studio space at intervals and they went away refreshed, thinking a little differently after experience with paint and colour and form.

Complex connections (detail), acrylic and marker pen on crumpled paper, Lynne Cameron, 2022

After this, I developed my own version of an artist residency within an organisation, that would not only be about my work as influenced by the organisation but also about sharing some aspects of studio practice – the commitment, the joy of getting lost in painting, the excitement of emerging ideas. 

Out of respect for their work and to connect with my long term interest in conflict transformation, I offered to trial this model of a residency with the Berghof Foundation. Coronavirus, and the need for people to work from home, has changed the residency model yet again, to online mode. Having developed an online ‘un-residency’, I realised that this had the very positive advantage of being able to be carried out from anywhere, including Berlin.

 So here we are!

My temporary studio, with the painting Complex Connections

I’m not based in the Berghof Foundation office but up the road in Prenzlauer Berg in an apartment where I’m setting up a small temporary studio. I’ve carried a few supplies from UK and will replenish them from the riches of this city. So far I have some lovely cardboard to paint on (a box from the local Aldi), five Molotow markers from the nearby store that sells aerosol paints, some post-it notes, and some thin paper that was used for wrapping paintings in my suitcase.

I am really ‘trusting the process’, and excited to find out what can happen in the next three weeks of this almost-a-residency, working alongside in dialogue.

Art and conflict transformation - a new journey begins

I have recently hosted two workshops from my Scottish studio for staff from the Berghof Foundation in Berlin. This is a wonderful NGO that works in peace-building and conflict transformation, and today they celebrate their 50th birthday. I find their mission statement profoundly moving and important:

• While conflict is inevitable, violence is not. We bring people in conflict together, creating space for conflict transformation.

I'm delighted to be working with the Berghof Foundation as artist-in-residence as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations. There will be lots more to share with you about this partnership when I travel to Berlin to spend time in their office, hopefully in the spring of 2022. Meanwhile, Zoom allows online studio visits and we have begun exploring connections between art and conflict transformation.

This week we looked at the work of Issam Kourbaaj.

Dark water, Burning world Issam Kourbaaj

And before that at the Throne of Weapons in the British Museum.

Throne of Weapons, Cristovao Canhavato (Kester)

My own painting practice connects with conflict transformation through its underlying values and themes - “attending to the beauty in our damaged world and to our brave attempts at building relationships across misunderstanding and conflict”.

Farming again, acrylic on card, Lynne Cameron, 2014.

This painting came out of visiting conflict transformation practitioners in northern Kenya several years back. We stopped to notice a new fence in the landscape and heard how important it was as a symbol of decreased violence in the area. People who had been too scared to farm had returned to their land and started digging to plant crops.

I am excited by the two-way interaction of the Berghof residency and to seeing how this influences new work.