Cameron Davis
Q: Where are your roots deepest? What is your story? How did you get involved with your work?
A: My work uses the language of painting to explore notions of what is nature. My roots are deepest in the woods, in the forest, with plants, as reference and metaphor. The painting process becomes an act of sense-making prompted by the perception of being situated within life. This dissolves the human-nature separation boundary. One of the earliest memories I have of wanting to give form to that experience of dissolved ego happened when I was maybe seven or eight. I remember being in a grove of white pines. Moved by the swaying of the pines in a strong wind, I was spinning, spinning, and singing a song I made up. I had a moment where boundaries dissolved between me and the world—the trees, the wind, and I were one. When the feeling went away, I went inside and picked out the notes of the song on the piano and wrote down the notation. I don’t know what prompted me to do that—whether it was about capturing the experience or wanting to enter back into the feelings I had had. I don’t know where I got the idea that it was important to give form to an experience, but a similar impulse brings me into the studio today.
Q: How does your mission align with New Perennials?
A: My work is framed by engaging with a sensed presence or animate intelligence in nature, human and more than human. Perenniality, from a philosophical point of view, is also about animate intelligence and reciprocities—or the fact that LIFE seeks to live, implying its ongoing and evolutionary nature. This notion helps situate we humans as part of life, amplifying our belonging and kinship with all LIFE. So, the paintings reflect an emotional and conceptual inquiry, exploring this shared sense of human alignment with the way life works, perennially seeking continuation. The painting process metaphorically reflects this alignment by noticing patterns of relationships of shapes, color, line, surface texture, as well as references to identifiable imagery, while seeking and sensing coherence across differences. This echoes LIFE processes of complexity, differentiation, and emergence—symbiosis, reciprocity, allurement, and expression. Improvisation feels like a responsive orchestration of factors in pursuit of wholeness. This becomes the visual language of the paintings. This reflects the kinds of fertile-thought-soils (further playing with the metaphor) of the New Perennials Project.
Q: What draws you to keep engaging with New Perennials?
A: I am drawn to the yet-to-be-realized potential of practicing this living relational network that we are in the New Perennials project. I am drawn to noticing relationships across disciplines and am stunned by the gifts of the local folks in this network and the possibility to play and collaborate. I am interested in questions, conversations, and enactments examining how we align ourselves with life. Are there projects we can contribute to that support further this human alignment with conditions conducive to life? (Janine Benyus). Even this interview process in this context evokes the question: What is our connectivity? How can we identify the emergent patterns amongst us that we don’t even recognize yet?
Q: What is one way you go about seeking joy that nobody would know about?
A: I talk to my favorite trees on my daily walks. I will lean my back up against two favorite maples or place my hands on them to feel their presence.
Cameron Davis is a senior lecturer with the Department of Art and Art History and an Environmental Program affiliate at the University of Vermont, Burlington. She teaches Painting: Color and Invention; Drawing; Perspectives on Art Making; and courses on art and ecology. Cameron graduated from the University of Vermont with a BA in studio art; the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, 1981, with an MFA in painting; and pursued postgraduate studies in art and ecology at Schumacher College, UK, in 1998 and 2015. She exhibits nationally.