Transience and Transformation
Camrose Ducote, "Untitled #3," 2017
mixed media on panel, 30" x 30"
Camrose Ducote works intuitively, layering spackle, gel and paint on paper. She'll wipe bits of the surface away, add more, and continue the process until she is happy with the result. “I never know where I’m starting and where I’m ending,” she says. “That’s what’s exciting for me. I just follow my nose.”
Ducote, whose show, New Work, runs until Nov. 25 at Vancouver’s Elissa Cristall Gallery, says her abstraction is influenced by the big skies and empty spaces of her childhood in Colorado.
She writes in her artist statement that she feels she's pursuing some elusive ultimate truth, making it hard to discuss her work in a definitive way, particularly as abstraction relies on sense impressions.
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Camrose Ducote, "Untitled #6," 2017
mixed media on panel, 30" x 30"
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Camrose Ducote, "Untitled #16," 2016
mixed media on panel, 36" x 36"
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Camrose Ducote, "Untitled #21," 2016
mixed media on panel, 30" x 30"
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Camrose Ducote, "Untitled #14," 2016
mixed media on panel, 30" x 30"
But she says her themes – as well as her process – relate to transformation and the transient nature of life. “The work shows that structure eventually decays and what is left is a visceral quality, alluding to the idea that all is in transition – a seeping out from, a splitting up between, a breaking away from – all serving to remind one of the nature of life in its cycle of birth, decay, death and metamorphosis.”
Her iconography has come to include recognizable elements, including squares that might indicate portals or even shields, and spirals that suggest tornados of energy.
Ducote, who worked as a sculpture technician at Emily Carr University until her retirement two years ago, has lived in Vancouver since 1977, when she moved north with her ex-husband.
She began as a textile artist, making sculptural work out of fabric. Over the years, her work became flatter, although it continues to express her interest in objects within space.
Ducote is also represented by Calgary’s Wallace Galleries and SOPA Fine Arts in Kelowna.
Elissa Cristall Gallery
1820 Unit 200 (second floor) Fir Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6J 3B1
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