From Eric Cameron’s retrospective

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Eric Cameron: Works from 1963-2008
Trepanier Baer Gallery
Friday, April 18 - Saturday, May 10

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Trepanier Baer Gallery

“The average viewer in an art gallery spends about 15 seconds with each piece, which isn’t really enough time,” says local artist Eric Cameron. Indeed, one needs to slow down in order to experience the meditative layers of the conceptual works currently on display at Trépanier Baer. This exhibit, which draws from three of Cameron's most well-known bodies of work, dating from 1963 to present, is a testament to the endurance of modernist concerns in contemporary art.

Cameron’s Sello-tape Paintings, Process Paintings and Thick Paintings affect a quintessentially modernist posture with the deliberate handling of the materials. The strong diagonal patterns of the Sello-tape paintings and the ordered, chessboard surfaces of the Process Paintings were created by masking off sections of the canvas, and alternating layers of paint. This laborious method was developed by Cameron shortly after he left art school, in order to avoid the impulse to rationalize his work within the context of art history.

Throughout his career, this controlled approach has evolved into an investigation that allows the artist to discover and yield to the “natural forces at work” within his chosen mediums. For example, the simple fact that it was difficult to affix the Sello-tape (the British equivalent of Scotch Tape), in a perfectly straight line resulted in the thin lines of under-painting visible between the squares in the Process Paintings. Try as he might, he was unable to rid the canvas of all of these tiny lines, but it is actually the lines that activate the surface of the canvas, causing vibrating optical illusions. “When the materials would engage with me in unexpected ways, I realized fairly quickly that I would either have to abandon the material or accept it, as I could not control it,” says Cameron. He feels it is this acceptance of the materials that has fuelled his practice, affirming that “all the things I value most in my art have happened for reasons I didn't intend.”

With their enigmatic, sculptural presence, the Thick Paintings initially seem to veer sharply away from the flat, ordered canvases. A brief explanation of the equally laborious process situates the works firmly within the same context. Cameron starts by taking an ordinary object, such as a spring or a light bulb, and applies a thin layer of gesso to one half. Once this half is dry, he patiently turns the object over and gives the other side the same treatment. This process goes on indefinitely, slowly mutating the object’s original shape through the effects of the overlapping paint as it dries, with some pieces reaching layers numbered in the tens of thousands.

The precise number of layers is captured in the titles, such as in the artist’s cornerstone piece, Lettuce (10,052), begun 1979. The original object, in this case a common head of lettuce, has been transformed by endless layers of paint into a kind of monument. More than merely obscuring the original leafy greens, the layers have added a weight to the piece that when combined with the smooth greyish-white surface are evocative of metamorphoses. The “natural forces” that the artist speaks of are never more evident than in these Thick Paintings. Far from being simple esthetic exercises, the slow and methodical way Cameron approaches painting has allowed him to meditate on the mysterious nature of each work, recognizing elements in each piece that point to a larger human experience.