Handwriting art

I’m currently diving deeper into how I bring words into my art practice by following an online course from The Poetry School in London. For many years, I tried to keep my wordy self separate from my painting self because words were the ‘day job’ and painting was the yearned-for life. After I adjusted the balance so that painting had its proper share of my time and energy (most of it), words crept back and demanded a presence in my practice. Sometimes in the form of poems that come out of painting, always in finding titles for paintings, and always in the notebooks that are a vital part of my practice.

Now I’m finding that there’s a lively collection of people making art out of/ with/including writing and developing it as a field in its own right. And I’m looking afresh at my earlier work and making new pieces.

As aliens, above, was made during my residency at Cinepoetics in Berlin. The writing started as “Notes in the Dark’ written in a sketchbook during the screening of the movie “Under the Skin”. I was a somewhat reluctant viewer of this film, and the combination of my emotions with the visual power of the movie produced a series of works (more here). In this one, I collaged photocopies of the writing and then painted in response to the words and the experience.

Here’s a video about making Notes in the Dark, with original music from the very talented Eileen Rositska:

The written notes retain some semantic meaning even while fragmented and mashed up in this way, while the words make other kinds of meanings through juxtaposition and repetition. They become visual ‘objects’ and forms, and also a surface for paint, while retaining their distinctness as written language. In working towards a finished composition, I consider where to place the words, how much to obscure and reveal of them, how to place paint over and next to them, how much colour to introduce … That the notes were made in response to film adds another dimension, another layer of experiencing and making meaning out of the visual and spoken/written language.

To the other side

Painting before, during and after lockdown in New Zealand

attending to the beauty

I’ve just updated my Artist Statement on this website to better reflect what gives meaning and purpose to my art. I felt the need to include this sentence, particularly the last part:

(My) expanded visual arts practice includes monoprints, text collages, and video, alongside vibrant abstract paintings, in a series of projects that attend to the beauty in our damaged world and to our brave attempts at building relationships across misunderstanding and conflict.

I make no apologies for using the word beauty. I feel an increasing urgency to rehabilitate the idea of beauty within art, in order to highlight what we may be destroying.

Your bravery was never in doubt. Acrylic on unstretched canvas, 200 x 200 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2019

Announcing …

The next exhibition…

We went to the beach

and sat on the rocks with sketchbooks. I ‘drew’ the birdsong - curlew, gulls, oystercatchers, and lots of lbb (little brown birds). With a background of humming harvesting.

The difference a frame makes

I’ve just framed a couple of the SURface prints for an upcoming exhibition, and they look so good that I wanted to show you!

These are approximately A3 with a white card mount, specially cut to show off as much of the print as possible, while neatening the edges. If you want any of the prints in the shop to arrive framed and ready to hang, it add £35 to the cost.

Maybes and possibilities. Monoprint, Lynne Cameron 2019

Catching the Whispers

that’s the title of my new online course. Four weeks of exploring the whispers of intuition that might be suggesting you grow a more poetic life. Click here for more information

from the Domestic Gallery

It’s good every now and then to curate the most recent paintings. I’m lucky enough to have a house that converts quickly to a domestic gallery with lots of wall space. Then again, I suspect most living spaces can turn into interesting spaces to share art.

Back in my island studio

Some weeks after travelling back from New Zealand, I’m taking a chunk of time to paint and write.

Work in progress... 

Are you ready to say thank you?

I started writing and painting the Thank You Letter series a couple of years back (the original idea comes from Flora Bowley). Having done the first one to my inner critic (above), I so loved the process that I developed my own version. I’ve now made Thank You Letter paintings for places I’ve loved and hated, for people in my past who brought love and for some who caused me problems, and for a year that was particularly significant in my life. I’ve discovered that you can write to anyone or anything that matters to you. And, while the process of expressing gratitude in words is delightful, expressing the less good stuff in terms of thanks has a healing and restorative effect.

Thank you for telling me. acrylic on paper, 30 x 30 cm., mounted on wooden panel. Lynne Cameron, 2018. £350

I start by writing the letter, as a letter, on the paper. The words are photographed but then covered with layers of paint, and not shown to anyone else. I allow some words to appear through the paint. The feelings of the letter influence the painting, and choice of colours and gestures. The finished paintings are abstract, dynamic, and bold in colour. The intense artworks reward much looking at, as paths and landscapes and forms emerge from the colours and gestures.

Recently I had the idea that people could work with me to create their own Thank You Letter painting, which could come out of loving rememberings of people and places we’ll never see again. And be cathartic acts of closure on difficult times. I would help in composing the words, and then produce the finished artwork, which would be deeply personal.

If you might be interested in this not-quite-a-commission idea, send me a message and I’ll share more details.

And there’s a special offer for the first two Thank You Letter artworks to be made this way in exchange for helping me test the process…

Unlocking the doors (to my parents). Acrylic on paper, 30 x 30 cm, mounted on wooden panel. Lynne Cameron, 2019. £350

Want to know how this happened?

I came to art quite late in life and step-by-step. There was a point when I knew that this mattered more than my day job, and I inched my way out of that too. What guided me was realising that I wanted a more ‘poetic’ life.

To find out more, click over to my new site where I’m talking about this shift. I’m planning an online course to help other people make a shift of their own. Sign up to be the first to know what’s coming.

CLICK HERE

a life in time

A stronger hold

Another monoprint inspired by the fractured surfaces of car parks here in Christchurch , New Zealand. Two layers of cracking interact, and spread across the surface. And yet the surface holds, strong enough to move across towards a different future.

Hauntings

This print, from the SURface project, has at least three layers, printing and overprinting. Sometimes I see paths that lead in and out of the darkness. Sometimes it seems as if a tall tree reaches into the sky. There are horizons and falling shapes, light and darkness beckoning. And sometimes it’s just lines going nowhere and forms without edges. And then strong but tiny lines show up in the far distance..

In that moment. Monoprint. £150 from the shop. 

The time has come

to make the SURface prints available to buy in my website shop.

You can read more about the Christchurch-based project by following the link from the home page. 

And - I just sent out my Newsletter. You can sign up to receive it on the Join page. 

we stood in silence

and then, in March 2019, came the mosque shootings in Christchurch

the shove of other worlds crashing into ours

lightning flashes of fear, revealing depths of human cruelty,

and, immediately, kindness.

The rolling of grief across days.

I took some steps back from the artwork, allowed space and more days.

And when I came back, there were the roses. Dead and damaged roses appropriated for print-making. Wistful bouquets for the grief-stricken.

Without and within

Today’s studio time was spent composing - using card mounts to create a composition within a frame.

It makes all the difference...

Watching the paint

I love exploring what happens when wet paint spreads across a surface. Today I was working on this small canvas panel.

I had prepared the surface by collaging some twine into the gesso. It made a miniature landscape on which the paint moved...

This happened in the studio today

Adding a splodge of black to an ongoing painting, I found a bird...

I painted more splodge-birds and gave them red eyes 

I don’t know why and I don’t know if they’ll stay, but it was interesting to meet them on the paper...

dynamic painting is like that

Children looking at art (5)

And sometimes… a visit to the gallery doesn’t work, and you’re better off in the soft play area in the foyer! It is hard work taking toddlers to galleries. At that age, they resist being corralled and held back, while still too young to imagine how their movements might affect other people. Instead, the adult has to do this empathy work while diverting the child to less noisy or disturbing activities.

Naya at 21 months enjoyed walking on the beautiful wooden floor of Christchurch Art Gallery and being in the wonderful starry lift. What spoiled our visit was a warning from an over-cautious attendant not to touch anything, and being followed to check we behaved ourselves – I would like to have been trusted not to let her cause upset or damage.

just walking

Later, she had fun climbing (quietly and gently) on and off the (empty) sofas, but the best I could manage in terms of looking at art was to direct her attention to paintings with ships or grapes, in between climbs. She paid most attention to another visitor who was looking at the paintings, copying her stance with hands clasped behind her little back and feet apart. She’s learning what people do in art galleries…

She was scared by a contemporary exhibition with life-size figures, but quite intrigued by the shapes and colours in some of Gordon Walters paintings, and started to look at patterns – “blue square!”

with Gordon Walters

We then retired to the soft play area, where she made towers of bricks. It was good fun but it was placed far from any artworks, and we could have been in a supermarket.

This less-than-successful visit made me think about how galleries might learn from and encourage toddlers’ openness to art. If I take Naya to the swimming pool, we are made to feel welcome, with free entry, a family changing room, and a warm shallow pool that works for her size, plus lessons if we want them. I wondered what the equivalent might be for experiencing art…

How about a time in the week when little people are especially welcomed into the gallery with their responsible adult, who is also welcomed and given suggestions for how to direct the child’s attention and talk about the art? Other visiting adults would know what to expect during that time; some might even enjoy sharing the pleasure and delight of children being excited by art.

During this time slot, toddlers could move around in their own way, fast or slow – having just mastered walking, they are still intrigued by the sound of their shoes on hard floors and excited by the wide open spaces of public galleries.

Some artworks might be chosen each week for special looking, with some kind of steps and little viewing platform so that toddlers can get to see the paintings at their eye-level and fully experience them. Postcards of these ‘paintings of the week’ could be provided for children to take home and continue looking at.

The lovely soft play area could be positioned inside a gallery so that there’s more chance of something ‘catching the eye’ and being talked about. Less valuable, but still interesting, paintings might be hung in the café (as is done in the Friends’ Room in the Royal Academy, London), and in educational spaces where toddlers come for activities organised by outside groups.

Visual art is for looking at, for everyone to look at, however small they are.