architectman

دسته: تکنولوژی ساختمان

  • How do we belong to the world? — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    How do we belong to the world? — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    “In what ways do we belong to the world?”

     This question lies at the core of the work of John Berger, according to Nikos Papastergiadis in an essay Forest (A Jar of Wild Flowers: Essays in celebration of John Berger, 2023, p.83.)

    Such a profound question ~

    It’s a question that helps me think about my painting in general – how I want to share something of my experience in the world as an older woman – and about how I can develop it through the particular and specific.

    Currently I’m working on a series of abstract paintings that arise from walking the canal path in Oxford on my way to my new studio. Houses and gardens back on to the canal, some humble and some grand. Each meeting of garden and canal is different. What people do with their 3 or 4 metre stretch of bank is fascinating to me. Each has some way of holding up the small bank, while often including a step down to the water. There are old trees in random positions along the canal that have been built around. Some board their canal edge and place chairs there. Some keep canoes. Some incorporate it into the garden. Some keep it very trim; others let it grow wild. Many have little sheds there, some turned into offices. And from my vantage point across the water, I see what’s happening at canal level – broken steps, weeds, shadows, and ducks.

     On sunny mornings, the low English sun strims through buildings and branches on to the green water. Sometimes the brightness lies beyond the dark bank, pulling the eye up into the garden. Sometimes patches of sky lie on the water.

    My paintings take from the experience of walking and looking. They take the random patches of light and shade, the horizontals and verticals of planks and steps and sheds, the secret tangles below the bank and the overhanging tangles of branches and brambles.

    In choosing colour and combining forms, I am speaking of how I belong to this world –committed still to the practice of attention and noticing, starting over in a new studio, priced out of houses backing on to water, privileged to walk on this path, while slightly wary as a woman alone.

     Half a world away in New Zealand, I transform this particular, specific belonging into little studies on paper, in preparation for big paintings on canvas.



    Source link

  • a slipping glimpse — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    a slipping glimpse — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    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)  



    Source link

  • The wall of experimentation and the wall for contemplation

    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.



    Source link

  • Responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (1) — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    Responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (1) — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    One way I respond to her statements about what holds back women is to feel how they apply to my own art practice/life, then turn them around, and affirm the reversal:

    i stand up in front of the world, unique and sovereign.

    I have found reversed statements like this both bracing and encouraging. They have given me courage on days when being an artist feels so hard, such a waste of effort and precious time.

    i throw prudence to the wind and

    try to emerge beyond the given world

    I can even try:

    i have this madness in talent called genius

    and if that sounds too much, I can still ‘try on’ the statement or ‘hold it against me to see how it might fit’.

    This OWN-TURN-OWN practice of working with de Beauvoir’s words has been very formative for me. It has given me energy to continue on bad days, and to place my work in a larger perspective. It moves beyond a reprimand into spine-strengthening encouragement.

    Next time: Themes and metaphors in Chapter 14, all the words



    Source link

  • Why these workshops, why now? — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    Why these workshops, why now? — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    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.



    Source link

  • responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (2) — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (2) — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    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.

     



    Source link

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

    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)



    Source link

  • usually right … what, me? — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    usually right … what, me? — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    Whether or not intuition can be described (only) as “instincts…honed through use and experience”, it’s the next sentence that struck me:

    you reach a point in life when they are usually right

    How unusual to hear this from a woman. How wonderful!

    I’ve been journalling on what I might do differently if I (finally) accepted this … and wanting to share that thought with all the women who read my blog.

    Also – there’s still time to sign up for the workshops and explore what your intuition has to say.



    Source link

  • Layering — Lynne Cameron Artworks

    Layering — Lynne Cameron Artworks



    Layering has long been important in my painting process. It’s a simple notion: on day one, I paint the first layer; on day 2, I paint on top of the first layer; on day 3, I paint on top of the second layer; at some point, the layers, what’s hidden and what’s revealed, form a composition that satisfies, and the painting is finished.

    Of course, it is much more complicated, and more contingent, than that.

    I paint with acrylics, which means that layers dry fast. On top of acrylic paint or ink, one can layer oil paint, oil sticks, graphite, pencil, pastels, acrylic markers, more paint. A layer of paint over paint can be scumbled (applied very dry) or glazed/washed (very wet). Layering the same colour intensifies the hue; layering another colour changes it.



    Source link

  • Condensing the exhibitiion ‘Silent Conversations’ through an artwork

    Condensing the exhibitiion ‘Silent Conversations’ through an artwork


    face-angles, zig-zag digital print, Lynne Cameron, 2025. Limited edition of 20. Available from the shop

    Soon the paintings will come down from the wall. Months to organise, to prepare paintings and texts, physical work to hang, events to hold – it’s been a major project, and it’s over. I will remember how family and friends turned up from various corners of the country, and beyond, to support me and my work on the wall. How precious these people are.

    In the making of this digital print, I felt the exhibition reduce, condense, and fade under my hands.

    On one of the final days, I took my crayons and made a quick drawing – six of the paintings are pairs or groups of mysterious people engaged in silent conversation, like stills from an unmade film. I drew the angles of their faces as they talked to each other there in the exhibition. Ephemeral conversations, as my friend and colleague Cornelia Müller described them. Soon to be lost as the unmade film rolls on.

    Face-angles, crayon drawing

    Back home I set up my living space as studio for the first time in months, spent time looking at notes and sketches for unfinished projects and ideas not yet taken into practice. I made a copy of the face-angles drawing to preserve so I could work into the original. The ‘woody’ crayons I used are water-soluble; I worked into them with a wet brush, pulling the colour across the page so that the lines lengthened.

    face-angles, crayon drawing brushed with water

    In response to the wet page, printmaking suggested itself. On the paper that had wrapped fresh bread, crumpled and uncertainly absorbent, I re-drew the original nest of face-angles, dampened it and pressed down on to it clean sheets of paper. The 4th and 5th prints pulled off were interesting to my eye. A hint of chrysanthemums – related to mourning here in the UK but, in Japan, symbolic of rejuvenation and rebirth. I’ll take that.

    face-angles, monoprint

    I hang the original copied, the original made wet, and the print on the wall.

    face-angles, triptych

    I remember the zig-zag book I had thought about producing months ago. Scan, copy, print, collage until I collect the three on one page, and fold the paper into a zig-zag.



    Source link