Dimensions: support: 1525 x 2745 mm
Copyright: © Jeffery Camp | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Jeffery Camp's large watercolor, Southcoast. It feels almost like a dreamscape, a sort of mythic vision. What do you see in this piece, particularly regarding its representation of the figure? Curator: It strikes me as a powerful commentary on the intertwined relationship between humanity and the environment. Camp seems to be suggesting that we are inseparable from our surroundings, our bodies becoming one with the land and sea. The floating figures, are they free or are they trapped? Editor: That's a really interesting question! I hadn’t thought about it that way. Curator: Consider also the gaze of the figure at the bottom of the painting, and how it implicates us. Are we being warned, or are we being invited? It's a potent reminder of our responsibility to the natural world. Editor: Wow, that really shifts my perspective. I was focusing on the dreamy quality, but I see the activist statement now too. Thanks!
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A self-portrait dominates the foreground of this view looking from just east of Beachy Head towards Birling Gap. Camp has often painted pairs of nudes flying over well-known sites, including Venice and Millbank. The pose of each is observed in the studio from several angles. In painting the multitude of other figures here, Camp drew on memories of the Sussex coast. The picture's themes include the ages of man, the experience of near and far, and a sense of insecurity, which the cliff-edge flight evokes, along with an exhilarated joy. Camp admires Rubens's ability, in his oil sketches, to convey a figure's substance through deft and discrete marks of paint. Gallery label, September 2004
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