Burntisland – July 4th 2022
"A keen north wind blows street sweepers and the weekend’s litter from the funfair past shuttered shops on an early Monday morning, past the Smugglers inn, down to the harbour and shipyard. Rusting hulks of vessels moor at the old pier while the former fabrication shed shows little sign of life at this hour. The public road ends at a dentist. The sign says – ‘International Smiles’. I ponder this as a blonde woman emerges, her hair wispy, soft in the wind, contrasting the tamed, coiled submarine cables wound on giant bobbins of steel. Beyond, a graveyard for marine buoys – barnacle encrusted, paint salt faded, they lie at odd angles, defunct, silent, dead like the once busy canteen where breakfast cereal boxes still lie on the dust covered tables in the aching gloom. Swifts carve out the air, as an Easyjet plane hovers over the Forth waiting for its slot to land. Behind, the city of Edinburgh hunkers under the hills, grey today, bearing its northern soul of east coast introspection. I try a drawing and walk back through the town past a wee boy giggling with his grannie, carrying a yellow bucket and spade past the candy floss stall waiting for business to pick up."
Dominique CameronDominique Cameron RSW - Artist's Statement
As an artist my practice is rooted in landscape. I walk, draw, paint, write and film my encounters through the urban environment and the rural.
I grew up in the West country, a place of beauty, boredom and economic division. The most exciting thing for us as teenagers was the local disco on a Friday night and waiting for the Top 40 on a Sunday tea-time, trying to tape it on our mono tape recorders. This lack of adventure led to walking, away from home. There were particular routes I would take often, places I got to know in detail. It was a kind of ‘mapping’, charting the unknown parts of my surrounding landscape. To this day it is something I do on arrival in a new place, except now I make things that articulate what I find as artefact, as document as re-imagined memory of place. The teenage girl is still there, I can’t quite seem to shake her off, but its comforting to know I am still as curious and awkward and persistent.
Education
1989-92 – Napier University, Edinburgh – B.A. Photography (Distinction).
2013-14 – Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee – MFA Art, Society and Publics.
