CYNTHIA CAMLIN
Extremities

Cynthia Camlin is a master of non-conventional watercolor techniques. In Extremities, Camlin creates large-scale works on paper using watercolor, ink and acrylic that evoke the immensity and mystery of melting iceberg forms. This work combines naturalistic detail with an invented vocabulary of abstract, crystallized forms and pooling watercolors.

Much of Camlin’s work explores Romantic ideas of nature, from a standpoint that is equally reverent and critical. Her work over the last several years is characterized by a testing of formats, perspectives, framing devices, narrative expectations, as well as the mixture of new and historical techniques and materials.

The melting icebergs in Extremities follow a series of glacier paintings depicting multifaceted crystalline formations on panels and three-dimensional cubes. These geometric patterns can still be seen submerged within her icebergs formations in Extremities. Each composition is built through the incremental accumulation of small geometric shapes of transparent color, which add up to spatial trajectories and recessions. For Camlin, the incremental and unpredictable process of constructing these compositions becomes a metaphor for organically growing forms in nature, where erratic, unprecedented forms emerge from finite and predictable elements.