I’m
a Brooklyn born Jersey Girl who wanted to become a famous artist, or maybe a
Rockette, before I was five. Walls were my canvas, crayons my brushes. Sound
familiar? I liked to draw funny things because they were easier than realistic
ones. My people stood in tall grass with their hands in their pockets. Uh huh.
I planned on a career working for Walt Disney.
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Fear 36x18 |
I
was about as political as a kneaded gum eraser. Whomever my father voted for,
so did my mother. That’s the way it was in the 50s. The assassination, followed
by Vietnam, forced more emotion into the 60s. It was a perfect time to go off
to art school. I went to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with long-ish blonde
hair grown for the occasion. I was going to be a beatnik with an apartment
painted black; I’d walk down Benefit Street snapping my fingers. Black
turtleneck, black tights, and the required black beret. Beatniks morphed into
hippies, so I added beads.
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Saint Malala 28x29 |
‘Nam
crashed a lot of dreams in the late 60s. Boys from high school were stepping on
mines, and art school guys were starving them-selves as thin as skeletons to
shock the draft into stamping them 4F. Beatniks turned into Hippies and then
into Peaceniks overnight. Artists took to the street in protest with everyone
else except we had better signs.
There
weren’t enough kids left to draft so a lottery was introduced. Low numbers went
to war, high numbers did not, unless their grades were bad. I became as
political as any other young woman, afraid her boyfriend would be swept away.
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Grenade 24x30 |
We
worried through the ‘Hell No We Won’t Go’ years, sought God via acid trips, got
married because those were the rules. Some of us became photographers who
documented all the efforts, others painted out their angst. I was humiliated
because I wound up knocking out cherubic greeting cards, on the bottom rung of
the ladder of cool. And as many of my generation discovered, mining for a Heart
of Gold or not, things weren’t working out the way we were promised.
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| Time Has Come 14x16 |
Stomping Toward Feminism
No
famous painter dwelling in Greenwich Village, just a mortified RISD BFA
churning out “cuter neuters” as we called them in the Game of Cards. The only
artistic trick I picked up was how to be neat. I longed to make a fortune as a
fancy pants magazine illustrator like Bernie Fuchs. Madison Avenue, a real life
Mad Men four-martini lunch, that was me. Except it wasn’t. Not in Newtonville
living in a two family.
I
watched from above (as those of us blessed with fertile imaginations can easily
do) as the whole construct imploded. I was numb, eroded, and left standing in
line with everyone else in a casting call for “Who Will You Be Now?”
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| Rage 16x20 |
The
seventies were a decade of shifting identities. Due to circumstances beyond my
control, my new persona was that of a militant feminist complete with feigned
loss of humor, taking on androgyny as a costume, which was boring but the boots
were good. My ‘Nam era’ leftist stance easily slid into Take Back the Night
marches for women’s rights. It was then that I made a commitment to paint
women. Only women. Not beautiful,
nubile model types but the women nobody bothered honoring; aunts, neighbors,
grandmas at weddings. I told their stories, in a usually humorous manner and
always with affection. Political art without stridency.
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| World Upside Down 22x26 |
By
the late 80s I was encouraged by my life partner, Chris, to exhibit. It’s one
thing to put commercial work out there, the kind you may produce to make a
living, but the stuff that arrives from the soul, is another matter. Some of
you must agree!
Picked
24x30
A Reputation?
A
number of years passed, my health dipped down and moreso: in becoming disabled,
a newfound empathy for those in worse shape than I kept
me in balance. So I kept painting women, groups, trios, duos, stand alone's,
surrounded by convenient props . . . fruits, pasta, fish . . . whatever could fill up that white space in the
background. Exhibits were well attended. People bought. Sometimes. ‘Jane
Caminos: Narrative Painter of Women’ had found a gimmick.
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| Three in One 24x30 |
2012 Changed Everything
One evening, half asleep with PBS dutifully tuned in:
a documentary about women’s rights was showing, specifically detailing the gang
rape of 23 year old Jyoti Singh by 5 men in Delhi. She was cast aside, and died
from sepsis two weeks later. Tears of rage came as a surprise, as did finding
my fists were clenched. I’m not an emotive personality but here was a story
that cycloned a fury complete with yelling at the flat screen.
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| A Leader Emerges 24x30 |
That
night in the NJ rental house I vowed to devote the remainder of my painting
life to exposing violence against women across all cultures by telling their
stories as I found them. On Women Bound was born on the easel
the following morning. I became an activist artist.
At
first the promise to work for change sounded simple: I made a list of terrible
things that I knew were happening to women, mostly those living in third world
countries. YouTube and Google yielded videos, images and articles from
periodicals around the globe. Events out there were worse, much worse, than my
white bread upbringing had imagined, the scope of the project ahead grew in
size but also in importance. How much should I show on the canvas? Did I want
to shock or tell these stories without the blood and guts, which to some ways
of thinking could be construed as exploitive? What would you do? After all, if the ultimate goal of On Women Bound was to
help (in my small way) victims become the victorious, what would that entail?
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| Three Each Hour 22x26 |
There
have been subjects, such as the cultural rite of passage, FGM, Female Genital
Mutilation, that have been wrenching to depict. I’ve painted fear of rape
instead of actual rape, although one in three women will be raped in their
lifetime. I’ve yet been unable to handle stoning, breast ironing, or beheading.
Trafficking explodes as a worldwide money maker for villains of all stripes,
even in suburban America, where we don’t believe blonde daughters will be
kidnapped on their way to school. They are.
Sometimes
goodness helps to balance evil, such as providing micro loans to impoverished
women, or women taking to the streets to protest rape, or
corporate takeovers of mining that otherwise would be supporting whole
villages, or bravely forming barricades to block weapons of war from moving
forward. I’ve included these stories of defiance to see-saw the acid wrecked
faces, murdered female infants, and child brides.
Do
you think I’m preaching to the choir?
Will exhibiting paintings of women’s troubles ignite a dialogue among
those who see the work, as I hope? Can I
reach the “right people” and assuming I do, what then will these right people
do about it? Discuss in shocked voices
over a nice Pinot how terrible things are in Africa? And so? Change happens
step by step, at least I hope it does.
Awareness
is the first step, so that’s what I do and I hope that someone out there will
choose to share On Women Bound with a bigger audience than I can reach alone.
It has long been the responsibility of artists to work toward making positive
change where possible, and as hokey as that may sound, it carries historical
weight. The list is long and glorious.
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| Manna from Heaven 24x30 |
I
worried that taking on the role of Activist Artist might peg me as the
humorless leftist I once played at being, leaving me responding to like types,
but instead, through social media, I’ve renewed contacts and discovered
hundreds of supporters who let me know when I’ve hit the nail, gone too far, or
have made no impact at all.
It’s
with your help that I’m assured I’m not working alone, although there are days
at the easel when Alone is all there is: Jane hunched over with the Three-0
brush talking with a suffering woman in India who has lost her ten-year-old
daughter to kidnappers. How can a middle aged white woman, an only child with
none of her own, relate to this sadness? I stroke her cheek, her fingers,
choosing colors for her clothing I think she might like. Art as comfort.
Because
I’ve been fortunate to have found a voice for change doesn’t mean you have to,
but look at the mess we’re in. I never in a million nights dreamed I’d see a TV
show that would change my life’s focus.
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| Warning 24x30 |
Yes,
I still produce paintings from the original narrative series of beloved women.
It’s ‘painting happy’, a necessary break from On Women Bound and its
inherent pain. My reference files fill a back up drive and two boot boxes, and
just when I think I’ve got enough horrors to overwhelm my Mac, the news brings
another tragedy, followed by another and we understand that every war brings
genocide and a generation of children who will never understand the delight of
laughter.
This
is Week 10 of 2018 Artists
Tell Their Stories. Thank you for reading and sharing Jane’s story today.
To connect with Jane and see more of her work, please visit the following
links:
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