Marie Cameron
About the Artist
Marie Cameron is an imaginative realist painter and mixed media assemblage artist exploring themes of hope and awe in the face of loss in the anthropocene. She is based in Los Gatos, California.
Born in New York City, Marie Cameron grew up in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes and earned a BFA with distinction from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, majoring in painting and minoring in sculpture. While continuing to paint and exhibit, she worked in giftware design for Seagull Pewter and children’s book illustration for Barefoot Books, Buddhist Tales (1997, 2014) and Clever Katya (1998) and was awarded a prestigious Canada Council Explorations Grant in painting.
Her award winning work has been shown and collected internationally and has appeared on the cover of the novel, The Memento (2016), Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine (2017) and featured in the art magazine Poets and Artists (issue 85 – 2017) as well as Stanford University’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere’s website (2020) and Content Magazine’s website (2021). Her work has recently been published in Jen Tough Gallery’s Artists of the Bay Area, Wild Lands and Fun Size (2022) and in Photo Trouvée Magazine’s Echoes of Yesterday (2022).
Since moving to California, she has exhibited at Museo Diocesano, Pacific Art League, Triton Museum of Art, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Gallery 24, SOMArts, Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Anne & Mark’s Art Party, Santa Clara University Art and Art History, Las Laguna Gallery, Sanchez Art Center, Vargas Gallery, New Museum Los Gatos, Iwasawa Oriental Art, Whitney Modern, Arc Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, curated., de Young Museum of Art, and virtually with the Artist Alliance, Photo Trouvée Magazine, I Like Your Work Podcast, Cabrillo Gallery and O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. She is currently represented by curated. and Jen Tough Gallery.
Artist Statement
In 2020 I began embroidering silk rainbows onto vintage photographs in an attempt to reconnect with a sense of hope in the face of so much tragedy. The pandemic was raging, there were continual political, social, and environmental crisis and fires were burning all over California to the point that it was unhealthy to even breathe the air. I decided I needed more rainbows in my life.
Why rainbows? For me, they symbolized not only inclusivity, but represent an ephemeral, almost magical connection to our sense of wonder and possibility. I desperately needed to see the rainbow in myself, in others and in our world. I chose discarded, dog-eared photographs, caught from the light and shadow of the past, that spoke to the transience of the moment and the long arc of history. I loved the juxtaposition of the black and white photographs with the subtle sheen of the hand dyed thread which seemed to emphasize the magic of the rainbow. It became my daily, meditative practice to sit next to my air purifier and tenderly pierce fragile photographs with the finest of needles, pulling through luminous silk, stitch by careful stitch, needlework that conjured up my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Each rainbow in gratitude for the past and a prayer for the future.
I would share these works online spreading the joy and collaborated with my friend and author Christy Ann Conlin whose lovely verses graced the postcards few printed from several of the #morerainbows! series, mailing them to anyone in the world who needed a rainbow!
What are your “Treasured moments” & how do you connect it to your work?
My most treasured moments are when I feel awe and wonder. This could be a deep, intimate connection to nature, to someone you love, to one’s self and to one’s purpose. I like to symbolize this feeling of connection as a rainbow. Wouldn’t we all be better off if we could see the the rainbow in ourselves, in each other and in our world?
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