with sunshine and celandines.
It’s been a long, cold winter, with plenty of snow. And more forecast tomorrow. Amazing gentle colours when it’s freezing...
looking out to Loch Quien acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12” Lynne Cameron 2018
Thanking the women who changed things
I’ve been painting a new large (100 x 100cm) canvas. It’s the ‘daughter’ of a tiny Thank You Letter.
After a layer of writing, the paint started with a layer of subversive fluorescent pink. Then came the solid rich reds and blues, and waving green curves. Some unexpected bird-ish shapes.
wow! It is strong. I’ve had friends tell me they find one or other of my paintings ‘too much’ but this is the first time I’ve thought that myself.
I woke this morning thinking about it:
“I could calm it down with white. I could take out some of the strong shapes. I could control that corner with a line. Tone it down. Make it quieter. Stop it shouting so much. Introduce some order.”
Then I realised - this is a Thank You Letter to Simone de Beauvoir, and I’m planning how to reduce and silence its voice! On International Women’s Day! So wrong...
Any changes will be about the integrity of the work.
Another mother
Here they come! acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 cm Lynne Cameron , 2016 . nfs
this picture produced two generations of daughters... Can you spot the starting point, quite close to the centre. The blue 'cloud' came along to balance the composition.
Voices and no voices. acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, framed. Lynne Cameron , 2016 £550
and then this, which began from the middle of the left hand side and then needed a line.
Sometimes it seemed so. acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, framed. Lynne Cameron , 2016 £550
Mothers and daughters
My ‘mothers and daughters’ method is a variation on painting in series. It works through the zoom and crop of photos taken on my phone. First comes the mother painting, out of my lived and felt experience taken into the studio.
Speech Flowers. acrylic, collage, print transfer on canvas, 100 x 100cm. Lynne Cameron, 2017.
Then comes the looking. Searching the finished work for sections that themselves make good compositions - this can be done by looking through a small square cut out of a piece of card, and with the crop facility on phone images. If a part of the mother painting is really striking, i crop a photo to get just that section. This one came from the top right...
Speech flowers (detail)
This section is the starting point for the daughter painting. I love the technical challenge of making the new painting - I use the same size canvas so the painting is four or five times it’s original size. As it’s painted, it shifts away from the starting point and takes on a life of its own until it becomes a painting in its own right. Undoubtedly related, but independently existing, with a character of its own.
Speech Fragment. acrylic, collage, print transfer on canvas, 100 x 100cm. Lynne Cameron, 2017.
To the beach
Back on the island, I headed for ‘my’ beach. Sometimes I walk there with a specific intention, and this time it was to attend to curves. I’m working on a large painting that is composed of curving gestures and that reminds me of being on the beach, looking down on strangely shaped jelly fish and seaweed. Here’s a preview of a part of the large canvas.
untitled, unfinished work in progress. Lynne Cameron
On a bright sunny day, curving shapes in the sand were sharply defined. Curves varied in scale from tiny worm casts through water-carved edges to the shape of the bay itself. Organic, water-sculpted gestures made in time. I returned to the studio with my visual memory refreshed.
Scalpsie Bay, Isle of Bute. February 2018. Photos, Lynne Cameron
It was the cat’s neck that did it
Rose Wylie’s paintings were ‘fun’, in a way. Fun to see her particular take on a film or television programme. And I wanted more than fun from an artist who’s spent her life painting.
I overheard a comment, “It looks naive but you can tell she’s been trained”. How, I wondered, could you tell? There was a some use of tone to create light and shade.. in the end, what persuaded me was the cat’s neck.
Though the painting, Wylie shows a cat that has just turned its head to look at the woman. We can feel the lack of interest in the cat’s gaze; that cat-stare...
London days
Stratford International station seems to be waiting for art, or something...
I was pleased to catch Rose Wylie's "Quack, quack" exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery - missed it on my last visit because I was sick.
Thank you, Simone de Beauvoir
From the travelling studio today:
Thank you, Simone de Beauvoir. Acrylic on paper, 12” x 12”, Lynne Cameron, 2018
I started a new series of small paintings while I was travelling over Christmas. Travelling paintings have to be small and I love it when inspiration strikes on the road. In Wellington, New Zealand I paid a visit to my favourite French Art Shop and found this superb thick watercolour paper by Senellier.
the Thank You Letter idea came from one of Flora Bowley ‘s programmes that I worked through around the same time. She had us write a thank you letter to our inner critic (hallo, Huntley!) and then paint over in layers. There were other people I wanted to ‘write’ to in a similar way. Having found the right paper, I started.
It seems to be continuing. And Simone is on my mind.
A decision
We discussed the exhibition title today in my group at Morley Collège, London. And Scarlet and Simone was the winner. I am happy that it made sense to people. Now to find ways to incorporate a little more of de Beauvoir’s words into the work...
Looking out. Acrylic on paper, lynne Cameron, 2017.
What to call it?
When I read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, my world shifted a little on its axis. I was 62 years old, not 18 - how I wish I had read it as a teenager! I might have understood my being-a-woman so much more clearly. Anyway, I didn’t - I worked on making sense of my life as it happened, in my journals and, later, in art. Now, having read it, the influence of de Beauvoir’s thinking keeps me company, prodding me every now and then to question what I am choosing to do.
Film collage: Jezebel. 30 x 30 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2016
The most recent prod reminded me that I put together the book of painting~poem artworks because they mattered to me as art, and that it matters to share this work through exhibitions. So I’ve started drafting an exhibition proposal, and will blog here about the process.
At the moment there are two titles:
Scarlet and Simone
Disturbing the Silence
Scarlet is the red-haired woman who appeared in some of the paintings. I love the idea of her in dialogue with the spirit of Simone de B.
But which title to choose?
Who’s making me up? acrylic on paper, 41 x 63 cm, Lynne Cameron, 2015.
What is offered
My paintings offer spaces for wandering, and finding questions. And sometimes beauty.
Images gathered en route
Silks in Mumbai
texture in Tottenham Court Road
sand and shadows in Scotland
And out of these, sometimes a painting
untitled, acrylic on paper, 61 x 83 cm, Lynne Cameron, 2017
Charlotte Salomon - news of an inspiration
Once, in Berlin I picked up the biography of Charlotte Salomon in a second-hand bookshop. I found an artist who inspired me to keep painting my life, and whose technique pointed my work in new directions. This year is the centenary of her birth and I found this article from the New Yorker with news of a film and other events coming up, and a shocking revelation.
One of the key paintings by Charlotte Salomon in her collection Leben? oder Theater?
She escaped from Berlin to the south of France where she made over 1200 gouache paintings. The words were sometimes in the paintings and sometimes added on transparent overlays. It's good to hear that her work will be more widely known.
Charlotte Salomon was 26 years old when she was killed at Auschwitz.
Here is the link for the Amsterdam exhibition: https://jck.nl/en/exhibition/charlotte-salomon
Word-bags
The 25% 'birthday month' discount on my book finishes at midnight tonight. So be sure to order your copy before then - go to this page and enter the code SCARLET at checkout. Some people have found it challenging in parts; it responds to the pain of lived experience, as well as the joy.
And here is a final glimpse of the artwork
Enough waiting - it's time to dance!
This painting and poem appeared out of the blue a couple of years ago. We have waited long enough for our turn on the stage!
This is a page from my new book I paint... To buy your own copy (or one for a friend), go to BUY THE BOOK page of the website. For a 25% discount, for one more week, use the code SCARLET at checkout.
Soul singing
Today the geese are flying in ~ I read that antelopes are nearly extinct. Today the blackberries are ripe in the hedgerows ~ the fruit in the supermarket is clothed in plastic. Today the seals were diving and playing in the bay ~ grey warships sailed past.
Today I chose this painting~poem artwork from my book to share with you.
To buy a copy of the book, go to BUY THE BOOK page of the website. For a 25% discount, this month only, use the code SCARLET at checkout.
This seems to fit
From the book I paint... , I have chosen today's artwork to fit how it feels after the long drive from Berlin to Bute. The car is unpacked, paintings stacked in the spare room, and we are recovering our energy.
To buy a copy of the book, go to BUY THE BOOK page of the website. For a 25% discount, this month only, use the code SCARLET at checkout.
Leaving Berlin
I painted this image before leaving England for Berlin. Now, two years later, I am packing for the journey back. Another threshold to cross. Excitement, logistics, and a little fear. Onwards!
This is a page from my new book I paint... To buy your own copy (or one for a friend), go to BUY THE BOOK page of the website. For a 25% discount, this month only, use the code SCARLET at checkout.
From the book (2)
Here is another page from my book to share with you. The writing emerged during the painting process. I wrote it down and later shaped the writing into poetry. Most of them have some reference to the painting process and the colours chosen.
You can buy the book on the Shop page of the website and there's 25% off if you use the code SCARLET at checkout.
September
To mark my birthday month, I will be posting painting~poem artworks from the collection in my book here on the blog. I hope you enjoy them! If you would like to buy the book, there is a discount available throughout September. Just go over here and at the checkout enter SCARLET to save 25%.
I love the title of this first one - it came to me early in my exploration of intuitive painting. And I used it to title and frame my Berlin residency that is now nearly over. It was nearly the book title too, but I found that the poem on the front looked so striking that I went with that.
Our flying shapes the sky
I painted a woman -
not an angel
- green and pink
and she flew through the sky
blue-black
yellow stars
over a church and a cottage
a red hill
and an inky black path.
She moved the sky by her flight.
And underneath
in dissolving darkness,
watching from the cottage,
someone sees
the sky shifted.
I filled the sky around the stars with blue.
I carved the cradling moon.
Pink trails behind the flying.
I enhanced the stars with yellow and white
until they become
flowers
dropping
petals
earthwards.
She flies,
shaping the sky.