Artist Statement
Camille McPhee

Scientific theorems, observations, and spiritual intuition of the natural world form the basis for my paintings. As these artworks have come to life I have felt like a scientist or a child on a journey of discovery through experimentation. With each drop I learned something new about the paint and in turn something new about our universe. The paint abides by the same laws that all objects in the universe do and it is therefore fascinating to watch how it interacts with its circumstances.

This body of work contains two components. One is my process used in making the work. This process implements a technique whereby the physical and chemical actions of the painting materials are also the subject of the expression. The fundamental phenomenon of the materials is an expression of the laws governing the universe.

The second component is the final visual phenomenon. I am attempting to make an invisible concept visible. The final images illustrate the concept of duality as a symbol of all dualities that might be apparent. Using only black and creamy white non-colors, the creamy white is the source of the black’s absorption. They are polarities of light. The two are fluctuating in and out of each other as a metaphor for the expansion and contraction of the universe, the rise and fall of a pulse, birth and death, and any other duality that exists in the known universe. This fluctuation and tension between two polar sources, which are two sides of the same coin, continues infinitely with the purpose of seeking balance.

Although each image is contained on either a canvas or board, the viewer does not know where the images end or begin. The canvases in this body of work may be analogous to the idea of photographs, which have been taken at various focal lengths, of an unidentifiable abstraction. The viewer is only seeing a piece of a potentially infinite picture. Therefore each image may be thought of as infinite. The scale of the “object” being viewed should remain incomprehensible.