DON’T MISS THE BEST SEAT IN

Title partner

Jenny Matthews is known for her exquisite watercolours of flowers but her most recent work sees her venturing into new territory. Matthews travelled to the Italian town of Fabriano hoping to paint the famous fields of flowers on the Piano Grande plateau. Finding the roads around the town blocked because of earthquakes, she turned to the hills around Fabriano for inspiration.

clamber my way up the bank where I am met by a man and his dog. This is my first encounter with someone in the wood. He asks if I am OK and I feel embarrassed by my clumsiness. I introduce myself as an artist as if that might explain things and he asks if I am famous to which I laugh and apologise and say no. […] I paint the fragile day. It starts to rain, the drops settle on the paper. I stop, not wanting the rain to obliterate my marks, carefully roll up the paper and quietly take my leave.”

This series from Cameron follows on from a couple of immersive projects in which she carried out intensive pictorial observations around Montrose before turning her attention to Leith in Edinburgh last year. The resulting exhibitions at Wall Projects in Montrose and Fidra Fine Art brought her work to a wider audience.

There is speed and movement in all Cameron’s work. Her quickfire style of making marks, coupled with a photographer’s eye for tone and composition, makes for a lyrical mix. Her work is, on the one hand, simple and representational, while on the other, complex and mysterious; a scumble of rain and snow marks catching fleeting weather patterns as they blow through the woods.

Her titles are lyrical too; from I hear the Geese Fly South to The Sky in the Burn, there’s a sense that, as viewers, we are instantly planted on the forest floor as the seasons ebb and flow.

As humans, we all have an in-built desire to understand our environment. As an artist, Cameron, who moved to Fife fairly recently, feels that need more keenly than most: “The repeated action of going back to a place helps me build a relationship with that place... I’m not interested in the picturesque. I’m interested in the ordinary.”

The Wood: Dominique Cameron, Fidra Fine Art, 7-8 Stanley Road, Gullane, EH31 2AD, 01620 249389, www.fidrafineart.co.uk, September 1-30, Tue-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 12-5pm (closed Mon)