The Suitcase Series: Camilla Engman

this is just a sa mpling of the book’s 1 92 page s

morr an has her own story book!

Morran’s bored...

Come on let’s pla y!

I try to tell her I have to work, bu ca re a bit t she do esn’t .

With Camilla, we can feel the lush moss beneath our feet while on a walk with Morran through the forested city park adjacent to her home. We touch clouds, pick up sticks, discover mushrooms and gather other treasures of the forest. Dry and crinkled lichen is photographed like a scientific artifact for one of her organized collections. There is a reverence and admiration of nature and its annual cycles.

“Nature is showing itself from the prettiest side. It is growing, it is singing, it is soft and sweet. So green it almost makes your eyes hurt,” she writes after a spring walk. “It’s fantastic what a little light and sun can do for your spirit!”

The forms of nature are recurring themes in her artwork: amorphous and gourd-like spheres; branching forms referencing antlers and corral; droplet shapes of rain or perhaps tears... whether painted, drawn or rendered with scissors and cut paper, these motifs are the words in Camilla’s visual language.

While the splendor of nature is often idolized in her photography, within her paintings the trees, sky and ground become a dramatic stage. Camilla’s characters are placed in striking tree-scapes at once within nature but also separate from it.

“I think it has something to do with nature being old, cruel, true, and beautiful,” she explains. “You are always welcome, but it is on nature’s condition. Nature makes human problems

Today I ate my breakfast outdoors and my coffee indoors. It is hot.

We will have a party weekend. for about 50 people this all day, I’ve been baking pies est thing is I’ve only strang the go, time the did Where done 3!

I wasn’t or what did I do when baking? I don’t know. ..

Or did I just eat them..

58

61

ed in Pr i n t a d a Can