Mixed media on paper – triptych – 180 x 84 cm.
The wee small hours. Dark and rainy as I drive. I have a plan to paint the wood as it emerges from night and I’m a little scared truth be told. As I walk through the trees the torch beam throws long shadows, strange shapes. Its better with it turned off but it’s hard to find paper, paint, brushes, water. Fumbling in black, painting black in blackness. Noises – I scan with the torch, nothing, probably deer. An owl hoots. Quite suddenly I see the sky fill with stars. Still. Little by little, tones of grey seep silently, making sense of this landscape. The sky lightens unhurriedly. A new day, a new year.
dominique cameron 
I really love the journey’s you take us on with each piece, giving such a vivid fragment of memory that is a flame of life
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So much fun to paint at night; a different world of silver greys and starlight.
I do a lot walking in the dark and starlight, with my little doggie Desmond, on this frozen Northern Saskatchewan slough. Have been thinking about painting or drawing outside in it again…it has been decades.
He’s a white dog on frozen snow; tough to keep up with…but I am of the point. That it is good to keep the sense on edge a bit.
You must have been having fun; owls, deer…scritchin sounds…. It’s good to keep your sense on edge, a new experience for a painter. Gets you out of the comfort zone. And looking and beening acutely aware of the surroundings you are in. Gets you to the shadow side a litle bit.
It takes a while for one to calm to the dark, and the fear subsides, the eyes adjust and finally beauty bares itself..and the discovery of a new pallette of color and new world.
Love it Dominique.
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You’d make a pretty good ghost writer Dominique – I have read this on my tablet with one eye on my laptop screen playing a DVD of Robert Powell reading some classic favourite tales from M.R. James – the dark can be a very scary place take it from one who knows – growing up on an estate when I was in my teens outside Friockheim in Angus and having cycled from Broughty Ferry on a Saturday’s Winters night from working all week in my Uncles shop to visit my Mum and brothers – the 15 mile cycle there was dogged with howling winds and quick darkness – and the old Ever Ready cycle lights were never powerful enough and left me shaking with cold exhaustion by the time I made it to the Gardyne estate where my Mum worked as a housekeeper for the Gardyne family – cycling down their estate drive in pitch blackness with the hoots of owls and snapping of forest twig – I was glad to see window lights approach .
My Mum and brothers lived in a converted stables that was reputedly haunted by the servants who worked for the Gardyne family in the 1600’s who were all murdered in clan warfare for the Gardynes were at war with the Guthrie family and one night members of that family sneaked into the estate and killed the servants according to Gardyne legend – I found a piece of the warfare history in the shape of a cannonball grenade which I donated to Dundee Museum.
The converted stables where my family bided certainly was a very evil place which effected my family for another reason and stunk to high heaven of dampness.
Yes the Dark is a scary place
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