Donna Cameron
Artist Statement
Tactile Consciousness: About my Art Prints and my Film Process, Cinematic Paper Emulsion
My work is about the print and the creative process of the artist/printmaker. This creative process respects visionary thought, chance encounter, approach, capture and projection. Works of visual art for me are recordings of adventures that are shared through a sense experience of “tactile consciousness”; a trans-media alchemy using hand-pulled paper, pulp, fiber, pixels, pigment, light, projection, objects, language, sound and time.
Imaging techniques that I have studied and mastered include small gauge film, silver nitrate photography, digital recording, block, stamp, diapositive, intaglio and mono and solar printing, typing, paper pulp, and water and/or oil based paint. I need and use all of these skills in my work, to herald positive and negative reversal spaces, render visible storage of invisible objects, or repurpose artifacts of culture, as light jazz projections.
I believe that art should represent the artist first and, through the artist, message home to the receiver. Integrity, like place, matters. Chance elements are important to me. All of the aforementioned are signs for abstract narratives that I like to build sequentially in space or on a printed page, just as I do themes in a jazz film montage.
In the 1980s and 1990s I was noted for my improvisational handmade films and my invention of “Cinematic Paper Emulsion”, a print-forward filmmaking technique for which I was awarded a US patent in 2001. Variations of this technique have been employed here in compositions and themes.
I continue to hope for change as I interface a “tactile consciousness" of pixels, pigment, emulsion, fiber and pulp to offer viewers a way to make visionary (foot) prints in time.
