Camille Danielle Wortman
ART Habens
don’t transpose geometric schemes from paper to
canvas,although I have some triangular shapes in my
paintings, I use masking tape,once I can see what is
beginning to appear.So, yes I paint gesturally and
instinctively most of the time. When I paint on acrylic
pads and I have in my mind the photographed details of
a big painting, I try to stick to it, but, not for very long,
for I stop being in control very fast and the painting
goes where it chooses to go! I also love doing sketches
of people and this I do using” the right side of the brain
“ method, which means that I draw without looking at
my paper for most of the time. I always have a sketch
pad with me while waiting my turn in hospital and
people that I sketch are usually very pleasant about it.
During the last war this occupation kept me sane, I was
unable to paint as usual, but I spent my time glued to
the television and I sketched all the time, the
politicians, the reporters and the commentators, and
that really helped me through this nightmare! 3) For
this special edition of ART Habens we have selected The
joy of living and Freedom of a woman, a couple of
stimulating pieces that our readers have already started
to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What
has at once captured our attention of your artistic
inquiry is the way you provided the visual results of
your analysis with autonomous aesthetics: we have
appreciated the way you allow an open reading, a great
multiplicity of meanings: associative possibilities seems
to play a crucial role in your pieces. How important is
this degree of openness?
I paint and I cannot control the way people read my
paintings, this is the beauty of art. I am sure that when
Lamartine wrote his poem, “the lake” he was not
thinking that a little girl, back in tunisia will imagine a
marvellous paradise while looking at a dirty pool of
water... and when Victor Hugo wrote:”c’est le moment
crépusculaire” he did’nt have me on his mind, admiring
longingly” the last hour of the day”, or see me
connecting one of my crazy paintings to “le moment
crépusculaire”. Once, I paint or I write a poem or a book
it is no longer mine and actuelly I don’t beleive that it
ever belonged to me! A poem or a painting are like
dreams, they just happen, or at least this is what I feel. I
beleive that different people associate a painting to
different things according to their culture and the
richess of their experiences and their life. When I see a
lamb I think of the sacrifice of Isaac in the bible,
someone else will see a farm in his country and another
one will imagine a juicy rib on a plate! I was lucky for I
was born in an arab country, my grand parents spoke
arabic and at the same time were traditional jews
imbued with the thora, the talmud and my grand father
was a well of kabalistic stories .I was very close to him
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Special Issue