Greece: Time to return?

This recently published webpage: Greece and painting and me reminded me of how much I love Greece.

It is a while since I was there - the pandemic happened with all the life-upturning it set in process. And then airlines in a mess, and global warming, made me think twice about extra travel beyond the beloved granddaughters in New Zealand.

I can tell by the way I’m bingeing on The Durrells in order to catch a glimpse of Corfu that it may be time to return. These paintings made a few years back in the Mani and now hanging in my hall are shouting more loudly each time I pass…

The Moon and Scarlet 4, acrylic on paper, 61 x 50cm framed, Lynne Cameron, 2015.

£350 plus shipping.

It was a tempestuous time in Greece that summer, tempers were short and the sun was hot. In the midst of the heat, we celebrated the full moon. There’s a restaurant in the little village of Agios Nikolaos where people gather to watch the full moon rise above the mountains. Stunning.

The paintings are available through the Shop.

The Moon and Scarlet 3, acrylic on paper, 61 x 50 cm framed, Lynne Cameron, 2015.

£350 plus shipping.

Becoming an artist: responding to Simone de Beauvoir (3)

In The Second Sex, Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, Simone de Beauvoir offers a devastating critique of the problems facing women who want to be artists and writers. Much has changed since she wrote it in 1949, but also much has stayed horribly familiar.

In earlier posts, I’ve shared how I’ve worked with her words since first encountering them, constructing ‘turnings’ from her original. These turnings are not statements of ‘how it is’ but rather motivations/values/desires. In this summary, I group my turnings under four themes. Her critique turns into something like a personal manifesto and/or set of affirmations.

Speech Flowers, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm, Lynne Cameron, 2018

 

the woman, the work, the world, and transcendence

 My wings are not clipped

I go beyond the given through artistic expression

I throw prudence to the wind to try to emerge beyond the given world

I dare bold flights towards goals, and thereby risk setbacks.

I do not lack audacity to break through the ceiling

I adopt in front of the whole world, the disinterested attitude that opens up wider horizons.

I can be counted on to blaze new trails

I dissipate mirages and do not exhaust my courage - I do not stop in fear at the threshold of reality

I penetrate other shadows beyond clarity

I go beyond the pretext

I traverse the given in search of its secret dimension

I project my spirit with all its riches in an empty sky that is its to fill

 

the woman, the work, the world

 I fully assume the agonising tête-à-tête with the given world

I abandon myself to the contemplation of the world: I am capable of creating it anew

 I set the world apart. I question it. I denounce its contradictions. I take it seriously.

 I approach nature in its inhuman freedom, try to decipher its foreign meanings and lose myself in order to unite with this other presence

 I feel responsible for the universe

I think myself authorised to work out the fate of all humanity in my particular life

I make my history, my problems, my doubts and my hopes those of humanity

I attempt to discover in my life and my works all of reality

 I enrich our vision of the world

 

the woman and the work

 truth itself is ambiguity, depth, mystery: I acknowledge the presence of this enigma, and then I rethink it, re-create it

I passionately lose myself in my projects

I commit myself entirely to my enterprise. I am not tempted to give it up

I do not settle for a mediocre success. I dare to aim higher

I forget myself and generously aim for a goal

I aim for an object rather than my subjective success

I envisage art as serious work

I do not consider it to be a simple ornament of my life

I acquire technique. I do not balk at the thankless solitary trials and errors of work that is never exhibited, that has to be destroyed and done over again a hundred times. I do not cheat or hope to get by with a few ruses

I work

I do not attach too much importance to minor failures and modest successes

I have the courage to displease

I dare to irritate, explore, explode

I disown reasonable modesty

I refuse to orchestrate the mystification intended to persuade women to ‘remain women’

I can be a creator

 

the independent woman

I may feel alone within the world: I stand up in front of it, unique and sovereign

I posit myself as a freedom

I refuse to be object and prey

I will not waste my time on shopping and dress fittings and such

I do not deny my intelligence... or my age

I will not repudiate everything in me that is ‘different’

I have this madness in talent called genius

I will not stifle my originality; I trust it

I am solidly sure that I have already found myself

When the struggle to claim a place in this world gets too rough, there can be no question of tearing myself away from it; I emerge within it in sovereign solitude to try to grasp it anew

I learn from the practice of abandonment and transcendence, in anguish and pride

I dare to construct myself (and cherish myself)

TURN, TURN, TURN: responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (2)

In my previous post on The Second Sex and what it has to say about women’s creative work, I showed the technique of OWN ~ TURN ~ OWN. In this post I share the quotes and ‘turnings’ that I extracted from Chapter 14 The Independent Woman. They are offered for anyone who wants to do their own work on this insightful and challenging text; to take or to leave, to contemplate and maybe dismiss. Even perhaps to serve as fuel for your practice.

Not for the faint-hearted!

Example:

Throwing oneself boldly towards goals risks setbacks: but one also attains unexpected results; prudence necessarily leads to mediocrity.

TURNING:
I throw myself boldly towards goals, and thereby risk setbacks.
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

And just like that, oil on canvas panel, 20 x 25 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2023

Her sterile vanity comes from the fact that she cherishes herself without daring to construct herself.

TURNING:
I dare to construct myself (and cherish myself)
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex


From Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, I extracted statements that Simone de Beauvoir makes about women artists and writers, in particular and in general. Doing this is an act of noticing and attending that you might want to do for yourself. If not, you can find the list of quotes here: List of quotes from Chapter 14, in order.

The next step was to TURN each statement*, using I … rather than she, woman. For example:

she tries to deny her intelligence as an ageing woman tries to deny her age

becomes

I do not deny my intelligence... or my age

Each act of turning took me deeper into de Beauvoir’s ideas and my responses. I recommend doing it yourself but if you want it, my list of quotes and turnings/reversals is here.

This list has accompanied me throughout the last 8 years I have pondered it, read it aloud while walking the room, hidden it, refound it, and been re-energised by it countless times. They have become a list of affirmations, a kind of creed, a manifesto.

————————————————

*I’ve come to appreciate TURNING or reversing as a technique from the Byron Katie’s Four Questions in her book Loving What is, from Jung’s ideas of the Shadow, and David Richo’s book Shadow Dance.

 

In the next post, the themes of Chapter 14, a summary.

 

Why these workshops, why now?

...she will go beyond the given in the way she expresses it, she will really be an artist, a creator who gives meaning to her life by lending meaning to the world.
— The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

House by the sea, acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron

For years, I engaged in rational, analytic study of metaphor and empathy in dialogue. Despite my best academic intentions, the imagination resisted being quietened.

 In the middle of life, after cataract surgery, I plunged into painting. Years of painting that required an intensive search for my lost intuition via personal development courses, including Tara Mohr Playing Big, Julia Cameron The Artist’s Way, Chris Zydel Painting with Fire, Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training. And contemplation of women’s lives through the lens of women philosophers: Bracha Ettinger, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil. And teaching my own online course Catching the Whispers. And continuing conversations, shared readings with creative women friends. Filling notebooks with ideas and thoughts.

 Now, I’m bringing all this life together to offer exploratory workshops to enrich others’ creative practice.

If you join us, you will

·      experience the impact of intuitive painting techniques (bring your painter self or your non-painter self)

·      be led in intense conversations around your process

·      discover what can happen when you ‘go beyond the given’

Click below for more info and to sign up.

The wall of experimentation and the wall for contemplation

I’m finding this interview in the artist’s studio inspiring in several ways. I love their description of what is on the wall and why.

One wall of Bastos’ studio is lined with a huge piece of mass-produced wallpaper, featuring large-scale roses in an almost dreamy but restrained colour palette of soft pinks and greys, and overlaid with a smaller painting that pops with lurid green and blue scrawl. This is the process wall, where works are made and composited and amalgamated. It’s the wall of experimentation, Bastos tells us. The wall opposite is the space for pseudo-finished work, where many works go into a space for contemplation, and from there sometimes they go back to the other wall. It’s currently dotted with belts that hang and curl sculpturally. On this wall, Bastos comes to perceptively understand and link the evolving visual gestures in their work. They liken the process of placing the materials on the wall to tarot card reading, a process of divination that works by confirming what intuition and the right side of the brain already know. “I’m obsessed with salon hangs. I love it, because with a practice like mine, form really navigates. You find the commonality in the gesture, in the materials, but it’s not necessarily like everything is gonna look very similar. And when you do a salon hang… it’s easier to pinpoint the thread.”
— Berlin Art Link, Dec 12 2023, Studio Visit with Cibelle Cavalli Bastos

You can read the full interview here

Meanwhile, on my wall ….

Crime Fiction, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40cm, Lynne Cameron 2024.

a slipping glimpse

Today I wanted to revive this post from nine years ago, and to remember Jo, who offered me these words in the first place.

Baltic landscape, acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron

Abstract painter Willem de Kooning, talking about his practice:

Each new glimpse is determined by many,

Many glimpses before.

It's this glimpse which inspires you -- like an occurrence.

And I notice those are always my moment of having an idea

That maybe I could start a painting.

....

Y'know the real world, this so-called the real world,

Is just something you put up with, like everybody else.

I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:

then I'm in the real world -- I'm on the beam.

Because when I'm falling, I'm doing all right;

When I'm slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!

It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me:

I'm not doing so good; I'm stiff.

As a matter of fact, I'm really slipping, most of the time,

into that glimpse. I'm like a slipping glimpser.

 

(Sketchbook 1: Three Americans, 1960)  

A deeper layer of questions

Finding new ways to interconnect my writing and my painting is a continuing theme in my studio practice.

I spent a long coffee break going through my turquoise notebook – that’s the one where I write notes about my reading. In my mind that day was how to think about some ‘self-portraits’ I’d been painting, how to tie them in to my practice. I re-read notes from poetry workshops to see what spoke to me now. Notes from zoom calls with my friend. Notes about ideas and notes to self. Sometimes screams of agony. Notes and connections. More of an on-going conversation than notes.

 

The notebook’s timespan included encounters with Laurie Anderson’s Norton Lectures , Jane Hirshfield workshop at Coffee House Poetry, Bracha Ettinger on matrixial theory, Griselda Pollock on Charlotte Salomon, Gabriel Josopovici on Modernism, and the Weird Studies podcast. Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on attention, on ‘unselfing’, linger in the background always.

My conversation with the notebook turned itself into a list of questions. I realised as I listed them that these were the questions I needed to ask of the portraits.

I gave each portrait half a day to answer the questions. By writing in response to the paintings, I wanted to lead myself deeper into the labyrinth, to explore the mystery while retaining the mystery. Not to ‘unpack’ or explain – impossible – to notice more. The answers became a starting text, to be worked into something more poetic until it fitted, resonated, joined forces, with the painting.

I’m still working out how to best present these hybrid artworks, exhibition or book or ... Meanwhile, here are the questions. Perhaps they would work for you? Or perhaps you could find your own set from your notebook?

Questioning a painting

What can be seen in the painting?

What happens with attention?

            where is attention drawn on looking at the painting?

what was my attention drawn to when I was painting?

How does the painting gesture to beauty and goodness and tenderness? and to the shadow?

 What’s being amplified?

 Where’s the uncertainty?

 What’s the weirdness?

 What’s oscillating? What dynamics are in action?

 Any collaborations going on? e.g. with ideas, with other painters

 What has returned in a new way?

 What transformation has occurred / is offered?

 What possibilities are being held in creative tension?

draft of Yay Day writing~painting artwork, Lynne Cameron 2023

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.

Reflections on my artist residency with the Berghof Foundation 2: How to begin?

My vision for this work is best described as bringing my art practice alongside conflict transformation in the belief that something positive can happen in that shared creative space.

I don’t claim to know what will happen or even how. My experience does convince me that opening up my painting practice offers opportunities for other people to feel energised and more vibrant. And that feels like something valuable to offer to people engaged in the vital, difficult work of conflict transformation and peace building, the people who do the field work and the people who produce resources for them.*

So there I was with these ideas offered to the Berghof Foundation and received with interest. How to proceed when the pandemic prevented me travelling?

Home studio

As an artist, paintings emerge out of my, almost daily, studio practice and are intrinsically connected to my lived experience: what I’m reflecting on, what I’m reading, who and what I’m seeing day by day. In my original vision, residency artwork would come out of taking that studio practice into dialogue with the new environment, responding creatively to the work of the organization through empathic engagement with its people, practices, and processes.

Instead I began this engagement online, watching interviews and documentaries on the website, attending a Zoom staff meeting where I introduced myself and the idea of the residency. To these ‘watchings’ I took along my sketchbook, capturing words and images that resonated for me, later adding colour as I reflected on what I’d heard and see. The tempo of a voice might prompt a line moving across the page. The emotion heard behind a related experience might prompt a colour.

I started a series of online ‘Studio Interludes’ with staff, inviting them to my studio to see what was in progress, talking about art and conflict transformation, and about other artists. (More on these in la later post.)

In the summer of my missed visit, BF sent me a copy of their 50th anniversary book that celebrates the work they have done since being founded in 1970. The carefully wrought texts and images in the book helped me immerse myself further in the work of the Foundation. And as I continued my studio practice at home in Scotland, I began to see how these very pages could be the beginning of residency artworks, as ‘found poems’.

Next time, the process of creating the found poems…

*It seems likely that art can be of benefit to conflicted parties during the processes of negotiating and building peace. I’m not yet in a position to claim that or to offer many strategies for doing it. I am collecting examples of such work.