ARTIST STATEMENT
To connect with joy, hope and wonder I began embroidering silk rainbows onto vintage photographs at the beginning of the pandemic. I found this process of delicately stitching rainbows onto ephemeral, dog-eared and orphaned photos to be immensely calming during that time of deep turmoil. It allowed me to slow down and meditate on what filled me happiness and gratitude. I sought images of nature, families, friends, lovers, women, nurses and firefighters. Embellishing the grays and sepia tones with luminous pastel silk rainbows seemed to me an act of optimism. I so desperately needed to see the rainbow in myself, in each other and in our world. Girlfriends are rainbows – through sun and rain, day and night, forever and always!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marie Cameron is an imaginative realist oil painter and mixed media assemblage artist based in Los Gatos, California where she works out her dream studio, in the garden behind her house. Born in New York City, and raised in Maine and Nova Scotia, she earned her BFA with distinction at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick where she minored in photography and sculpture and majored in painting. She was awarded a prestigious Canada Council Grant and worked in giftware design and children’s book illustration while maintaining her art practice.
Upon moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late nineties, she became heavily involved in the local art community. Working in various series, her work focuses on the connections we have to each other, to nature and to our environment. Her award-winning work has been exhibited and collected internationally and featured in many publications, galleries and museums, including the Museo Diocesano, Triton Museum of Art, Marin MOCA, SOMArts, Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Santa Clara University Art and Art History, Las Laguna Gallery, Sanchez Art Center, Vargas Gallery, NUMU, Whitney Modern, Arc Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, Curated, de Young Museum of Art, Cabrillo Gallery, O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Blue Line Arts and Jen Tough Gallery. She has just curated her first show, LOST WILD for Whitney Modern.
© Marie Cameron