"Blue sky over the blue town. Visited Ken and listened to his stories of playing in the dry dock and nearly drowning in the harbour, of boys going to the fishing who were not taught to swim. If they couldn’t swim, they took more care on deck and the fact that if they did fall overboard their chance of survival were at best slim, perhaps it was better that way. He also said that young men would have all their teeth pulled, no point having toothache two weeks into a fishing trip. He remembered only one toothbrush in his own family. It was never used. Lunch in the lilac café, a sweet piece from the cabinet. Down to the harbour, over the bridge to the most easterly point of Scotland. A huge orange crane, a dead seagull. Granite boulders the size of elephants marking the boundary to the North Sea. Over to Boddam and the lighthouse, past the pensioners hut, an ancient green railway carriage, stripey painted sheds and washing poles on the green. Dogs and laughing kids."
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.
