dominique cameron RSW

An afternoon with Kenny and Stevie. Hiya Kenny. Hiya Darlin’. Kitchen cupboards in formica orange. I think its 1974 again. Cheery. Back gardens, washing on the lines. Cup of coffee and a chat. So yous movin ? To Fife I say. Drawings, guitar, how hard is a B minor chord, and the memory of his Dad singing a happy song as he mowed the grass. I ask to borrow a song for my book, something of his, and he sings a few lines, quietly. So, what makes a good painting ? Its having the eye , the way you see things, he says. He likes my drawings, thinks they say something. In walks Stevie, a cousin from London but now of Laurencekirk. Asks why I am here and we talk about favourite artists and carry on looking for the answer to what makes good art. Tours of Deeside, chaffeuring the rich and famous. Little dog curled up on my knee.The sea, caravan holidays and Montrose beach. I leave with more than I came with. As always in this place.

I popped into the mobile library parked behind Happyhillock Road and chatted to the librarian about memories of  summer holidays and fishing for sticklebacks in the river. I still remember how it felt to get stabbed by the jabby spiny barbs on their backs.

Monday morning, in the car park of Morrisons. Warm and sunny for a change . Lots of people watching me draw . Met a couple who told me they did their courting down at the burn and stories of tickling trout,  poaching and keeping a eye out for the police. The mornings best comments however came from an old man who looked at my sketch and told me how rubbish it was, telling me I should go back to college and that my drawing was not just bad, but really bad. In fact he said I should ask Tony Hancock ( he plays an artist in the film The Rebel, trying to sell his paintings on the left bank in Paris ) to ‘help yous oot’. Thats me told then! A quality heckle. Wonderful, funny morning.

I was thinking about Orkney this afternoon and the beach where I used to live. This is a memory of rain showers coming in from the west towards the beach.

This morning at Dighty was spent talking about moving house, the perils of bridging loans, giant hogweed, biting the heads off worms, using willow herb stalks as spears and arrows, asking where the police station is in Dundee to be told its next to the courts – the assumption was I would know…. (!), looking for frogs, getting 4 numbers on the lottery, watching funny stuff about repellent paint on youtube, finding 50p, and sitting in a wheel barrow smoking a fag  – not me !

Whitfield flats. Constable clouds and banks of willow herb. Dockweed seeding. Pine trees, tarmac and broken street lighting. A place that is a memory of me as a young child wandering through the estates, away from the new build houses, to the wild edges of home.

Dog shit bin, iron bridge junction. Summer smells of grass and plants I don’t know the name of. My only companions are the odd dog sniffing my paper and cyclists whizzing by,making me jump every time they pass. Another shopping trolley in the burn.

‘Blaw Bye’   mixed media on wood 30x20cm

Wind in the trees. Two boys come and watch me draw. ‘Thats braw. Eh’m doing art at school and I want tae go tae Dundee art school’, said one. The other boy said,  ‘Nah, its footba’ fae me, jist footba’. They grin and run off. I chat to a woman about the place getting cleaned up and a council man walks by picking up the rubbish wondering what there is to draw here. Then a man comes over and tells me of his childhood spent playing at the burn, about his own artwork and hyper dimensional torsion field physics (I had to write that one down ). That was unexpected.

Bus shelter, cool, cloudy Thursday morning. The air is ruffled by passing lorries so I hastily stick down my drawing. Three little girls all dressed in pink. A boy stares at the drawing critically for a long time and walks on. Meet a woman from Edinburgh. She fell in love and had moved to Monifieth. Her son was doing a PhD in Patent Law. Number 15 buses every 10 minutes into the city centre. They stop, thinking I want to get on and I point to the paper stuck on the bus shelter walls. I smile apologetically. Man on a skateboard, dogs and bikes along the burn. Graffiti under the bridge.

Greetie, dreep, a morning smirr. Mixed media on wood. 30x20cm