Gansey.
This painting came about after a visit to a friend who happened to be wearing a guernsey jumper. Seeing it took me straight back to my childhood and my mum. She was born and grew up on the island of Jersey. For her the guernsey sweater was a memory of home and a constant presence for me as I was growing up. I remember as a child going on holiday to visit family and the buying of the ‘guernsey’. We all had one – mum, dad my brother and me. I think there is a photo somewhere of us all posing for a photo wearing the jumpers. I hated mine – it was hot, itchy round my neck and when it got soaked after playing outside in the rain it was so heavy with its sodden, dripping sleeves and distinct wet dog smell. It probably took a week for it to dry out.
But of course it wasn’t meant for me. Originally the guernsey or gansey as it became known was knitted by fishermen and their wives as a garment of great importance. It’s heavy wool and tight knit stopped the wind and the rain from penetrating while out at sea. Each village was known to have their own patterns and markings, making it easier to identify a man if he was washed ashore after drowning, it was said.
I came across a book from the 1970’s compiled by an American woman Gladys Thompson who came over to document the gansey patterns before they might be lost. The sweater and its distinct patterns travelled from the Channel Islands all the way up the east coast of England and Scotland. Here is a recollection of her travels to Anstruther in the East Neuk –
……’At last I found the house, and she was delighted to show me her knitting…. She told me she knitted all the guernseys for her husbands and sons, who were away at sea. The kitchen was the real Scottish kind, warm and cosy, with a large double box-bed in the corner, painted yellowy brown.
After talking patterns for some time, she said would I like to see ‘Granny in the attic’, as she had been a great knitter in her time, and was eighty; so up we went, two flights of steep stairs, and she threw open a door at the top. I went in, and found the attic ran the full length of the house, and hanging from the rafters in all directions were fishing nets, and on the floor, coils of rope and beautifully made creels.
Granny was sitting by the window at the far end, repairing nets. Yards and yards of net – she’d a netting shuttle in her right hand, and a small pair of scissors in her left. She worked at a tremendous pace – her hands flashing in and out, snipping and netting and talking at the same time, she spoke so fast I could hardly understand her.
She kept all the family nets repaired and at busy times worked in the attic the entire day – I was really sorry to say good-bye, but it was nearly their dinner time.
Price: £3000
Dominique 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.
