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.

Images and words: John Berger

I have just come from the Berlin premiere of ‘The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger’, film project by Tilda Swinton and Colin MacCabe. Berger has been a hero for decades now, a constant force of  intelligence and an exemplar of a life well-lived, pointing a way into ourselves through action.

He was not there today, and he was enormously present. He was present in his intensity of expression on film, in his determination to communicate, and in the impact he had made on the filmmakers who afterwards talked about the filming in a Q and A session.

His voice over images of nature: A season is not something that befalls you. It is something that you inhabit.

In a panel on politics: I see myself as a storyteller… a passer of stories… across borders.

A supremely creative person who speaks of passing on what he hears, not of inventing it. And that strange word – passer – that seems to be neither French nor English, and to be both French and English…and to pass in all languages.

Time, vertical and horizontal. Parents and children. Deaths and births. Honouring memory and the past, and yet without nostalgia.

I need to think about that last idea.  … And as usual, he offers something to consider, to change the course of a life.

Tilda Swinton read his “Self Portrait” which he had sent to the opening instead of himself. He writes, he tells us, because something needs to be told and if he does not tell it, it might not be heard. He describes his writing process as a confabulation as an idea is shaped into words, followed by murmurs of assent when the words are fit for purpose.

I waited with a note to pass on to him, then wrote this blog post instead. The note said: Thank you, John Berger, for your inspirational life.

Words and images

In my developing practice of 'dynamic painting', the placing of paint on paper is sometimes accompanied by words and phrases. Sometimes these words and phrases become poems.

On Sunday, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to read and show at the Poetry Cafe in Woburn Sands, organised by Karen Littleton and Eleni Cay. Back in Berlin, I am combining the two on a single plane. Other modes of combining are being explored...

Watching the tulips

As a start to my contemporary flower painting project, I bought tulips from the market and watched them open, bloom and die. It took a week. It produced a painting and this slideshow:

Flowers and contemporary painting

I love flowers and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I love their growing and their blooming, and especially their colours. I consider it part of my mission as a contemporary artist to encourage attention to flowers.

a gift of flowers

And as a contemporary artist problematising the beauty of flowers is also part of the remit (see the collection Undoing the Arrangement). When I arrived in Berlin, a gorgeous bunch of flowers sat on the table in the kitchen/dining room that has become my studio. As the days passed, I had to watch them fade and die. This experience became a painting.

Watching the flowers die. acrylic on paper, 43 x 60 cm Lynne Cameron, 2015.

And now that experience is becoming a project ... more soon

The sun line

Glimpses of a new artwork, painted in the warmth of the studio, called 'Tangents'.

Once, long ago and far away in the north of Norway, I heard how the people would wait for the return of the sun. Six weeks they had to wait to see it again, counting down the days. When the day came, the children from the school would be taken up the hill to catch the first sight of the returning sun. With a picnic.

Here in Berlin the sun is not so lost, but it has fallen behind the apartments across the road and is not yet back. Any day now, I think. I am measuring its rise each day, looking up to where it shines on the balcony above mine.

The sun line - like the tree line (on mountains - the height at which trees stop) or the water line (the height of a flood or tide). It is elemental, embodied, essential. It matters when choosing where to live.

Today I found the sun on bridges over the railway and then in a surprising park created by leaving old railway lines and sidings to return to nature.

With temperatures below zero, the ice did not melt in the sun but at least it was visible.

From sun to snow

Three sunny days by the beach in Spain then back on the plane to Berlin - "the temperature outside is minus 10". Time for the big boots, multiple layers of clothing, walking carefully.

the angels that I keep finding on my travels appeared at sunset over the Mediterranean

a copy of Picasso's Guernica in a mountain village was a reminder of the power of art to challenge violence

the early Berlin spring is on hold

boots on

Back in cold and strangely beautiful Berlin, my first painting of the year spoke of the sea.. called Buried treasure, it is still a work in progress.

Crimson on crimson

I’m curious about

the monstrosity,

the crimson on crimson,

the broken circle.

How others see,

and no one sees it all.

Shifting

into the authority of the mark,

into the empty landscape,

I find

the dangerously decorative

and the ruthless selection

letting November light in.

A walk downhill

Walking downhill is actually quite difficult in Berllin as it is mostly very flat. That Saturday morning when I wanted some elevation, I remembered the area I lived in before and how the road slopes down from Platz der Luftbrücke to Bergmannstrasse. So that's where I went.

I took an artist's walk, with my camera, looking at what was around. From the Platz der Luftbrücke down the hill to Bergmannstrasse. I found inspiration for abstract paintings: colours, shapes, textures, and outlines against the sky. Back in the studio, I selected and cropped the images. Later it became a drawing, then a painting.

My starting point commemorates the Berlin Airlift that began in 1948. Nearby was a late rose and a bird's nest thoughtfully lined with plastic. A courtyard by the English Theatre was full of views and objects that demanded attentiion. In Chamissoplatz, I found a small market and a stall where the vegetables seemed to be arranged by colour and climate. The walk ended with the best coffee in the locality and my journal.

Studio Interludes

As part of my artist residency here at the Free University, I offer a weekly 'Studio Interlude' to researchers on the Cinepoetics project. People come into my studio at lunchtime or at the end of the working day to spend time with the process of art-making. It's turning into a very formative space for all of us. And fun.

Today I have moved my red sofa in front of the large picture we are creating together. My response to monolithic modernist art galleries is to question whether looking at art needs to be uncomfortable, or whether looking and seeing might actually be more rewarding without 'museum legs'...

A Studio Interlude includes lots of looking, some drawing or painting, and making connections between painting and film. We're building a shared vocabulary and I'm happy to see theories being visualisied on office walls and artworks appearing alongside computers.

Always a stranger, travelling

We travel, always only ourselves.

Reaching across the surface,

straight across.

How unknowable these new lands remain,

even as they push up towards us,

out of their geographies and their layered histories.

We carry with us,

in one small bag,

our lived memories

and find them, echoing back to us in new places.

Always a stranger, travelling.

We went to a fascinating exhibition at the Kulturforum in Berlin. Prints from Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and William Kentridge (1955-  ). My favourite room was titled "Inside the thought-space of images". Kentridge's response to Dürer's Melancholia was a journey through his studio:

He traces his pacing around, labels places of emptiness, lassitude, and the 'insupportable weight of eyelids'. The collage, ink, pen and pencil drawing was 24.6 x 39.3 cm, framed behind glass on the gallery wall. A very large version was copied on to the floor so that visitors could retrace his steps.

Seeing the exhibition prompted me to think more about one of my artworks. Called 'Cartographies', it has stayed in my cottage in England. Red wool from Nepal is stretched across the surface of collaged tissue paper and paint. It is 60 x 80 cm

Now I saw in it how, travelling, we are always strangers.

Finding quiet ways that fit

Well, it took nearly six weeks in the city before the mountains pushed back into my imagination. I woke up on Saturday and wanted, desired, a walk high up with a view. The best I could manage was walking down one of Berlin's gently sloping streets (there aren't many of those even). And of course I experienced a fascinating voyage, which I'll blog about here later.

Meanwhile, the mountains. Acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron 2015.

I also felt a longing to be cosy in a little house in the mountains. There was one village in the French alps that I remembered wandering around. Near deserted but with small signs of life, of lives. A cat curled up in a basket on a balcony table. Flowers in a garden, tended, weeded. Signs of care taken. Quiet lives that fit into the landscape, into elbows of land between rocks, between paths and mountains, on flat patches of land. Ensconced in the land; working with it, not bashing into it with concrete and bulldozers.

Looking down on Albiez-le-jeune, France. October 2105

As the first snow comes to Berlin, I consider this imagined desire metaphorically, in relation to my art. Not bashing into my landscape with concrete and bulldozers but finding quiet ways that fit how it is.

Albiez-le-vieux, France. October 2015.

I might also just ring that woman who may have a house to let...

A journey by train, Berlin to Copenhagen

At Berlin central station, a mother and two children sleep deeply behind a bench. Around them gather policemen and women, with kind faces. Plastic gloves are pulled on before they are gently wakened. Taken elsewhere before the rush hour. Compassion and barriers.

Flensburg station, the outside platform. Trains from Germany stop and we change for Denmark. Families with four or five children and tickets for the train. Such small bags they carry. 'Station Mission' women with tabards and badges. One stops to help me understand where to go.

Barriers, makeshift pieces of wood tied with string. Red and white. They make us queue. Migrants at one end and 'us' at the other. How uncomfortable we feel and yet don't know how to move. A pair of policemen doing nothing much. A train station employee with Service on his red jacket checks tickets, reassures that this train will go, in one hour, in twenty minutes.

Downstairs in the station hall, people on benches, on the floor. A long jumbled line following mission women, who knows where. It feels like the town itself is in a state of shock, doing what can be done, in a hushed daze.

Cold and knowing this is not yet winter, our minds imagine us onwards. Tired and knowing there is another country to cross. Welcomed and watching the plastic gloves being pulled on.

   Who are the guardians? (2)  acrylic and collage on canvas