ON MAPPING (interview about painting) by Camilla Howalt

In the interview below, the artist behind INK GRID delves into the inspirations, techniques, and meanings that underpin her evocative body of work. These early paintings on paper transform tools of geographical mapping into explorations of the interior world, portraying the subtle shifts in mind and perception. Through a blend of dyed felt pieces, meticulously designed stencils, and intricate stitching, the artist crafts a dialogue between pain, healing, and the continuous quest for self-understanding. Discover how these works fit within a broader artistic vision aimed at repairing and re-pairing the fragmented experiences of the matter (form) of body and senses (colours) of mind.

What inspired this artwork?

INK GRID Maps of Nuances are early paintings on paper based on the idea of using tools of mapping a geographical space in the outside world into unknown spaces and areas of the interior world. They are attempts at portraying what I call ‘adjustments in action to the experience of subtle shifts in the mind of feeling and perception.’ They are attempts at getting to know oneself. These paintings are not just maps but also portraits, depicting the space between outer and interior worlds, serving as thresholds and maps of behaviour.

What techniques and materials were used?

The paintings evolved from earlier art projects using coccinelle dyed felt pieces. The idea of cutting similar to how cutting is used in film was to create a larger narrative out of disparate individual pieces (images) of abstract colour and suturing or stitching these into larger collages of colour. The combination of felt and dye created a bloody, soft, and beautiful effect, stitched with polyester thread to create a variety of material textures. These works were initially called Felt Grid, and were often mistaken for paintings, which is why I started translating my 3D work back into 2D.

I designed my own stencils with asymmetrical squares, meticulously cutting each one with a razor-sharp knife. These stencils were transposed onto 300gsm acid-free cotton paper.  

What is the intended message or meaning behind the artwork?

Most of my work intends to balance an experience of vicious but invisible pain with the idea that I am able to rise above pain. They appear tranquil and even peaceful but the production of them and the thousands of repetition is behind the mask of equanimity another story. I called these works Felt Grid 1 to many. 

Instead of using a ruler to measure out similar sizes of squares, I designed my own stencils of asymmetrical squares, resembling pieces of bone which, like in a puzzle, were made to fit. 

These alongside the later works like LOVE LETTERS, are piercing moments of non-verbal interior communication of my body and its experience of being in the world, and are testaments to a need to control and map the 1001 blood tests my body has and still endures, and linking these repetitions like dots  into moments of art historical ideas, materials, concepts and portrayals to give my experience of being a wounded body a lineage up and beyond the futility of the present moment. 

What is the intended message or meaning behind the artwork? 

The stillness of architecture, the apparent exterior stillness of what other people appear to be is incomparable to the scrutiny of the inside of my mind and body. Constantly something exploded, got cut, got pierced, got fragmented, got disposed of. Vanished in the depth of agonising pain. Nothing ever developed calmly like the chronology of the ABC, the alphabet, for example. I had interior and exterior experiences which kept cutting my thought patterns, my memories, and my relationships into pieces. 

At the time of creating these works, I had no language for what I am here describing. Everyone needs a safe and soft rug from which they can fly into the world and home again. The repetition of suturing, the softness of the fabric or the texture of the paper felt like soothing skin and were attempts at creating some sort of foundation, or rug, from which I could be and feel whole and on which my mind could take flight. They border on passivity, boredom even, and exist on a field of total stillness - an imaginary momentary absence of pain - and despite being meant to feel calm and safe these experiences were not part of my vocabulary. I find it interesting that these works are my inaugural Fine Art Giclée prints on my new website.

 

How did the creation process evolve over time and why not express the described violence?

Over time the works became bolder in some way but also more coded. The colours, from having been earthy, dry red and brownish leather like, developed into fierce passion red as I consciously began working to control the pain itself, my thoughts about the pain, the actual experience of pain, which directly had affected my thoughts about myself. I aimed at creating a threshold between 2 and 3 dimensions, a place up and above the physicality of my body  - think of the verticality of a coordinate system - and through this inner kind of freedom fight a vault of symbols, signs, metaphors appeared which helped me hold the memories of physical and mental pains in tight compositions. 

From squares, I turned to blobs and dots and from dots to coded linguistic systems, which had been there all along but sort of separate or split off my awareness. About this time - although as you can see from my writing here, there is no linear stretch of time - I also worked with actual stitching, knotting and winding of thread of various thicknesses. Around steel, around wood and trees, around bricks, around concrete. Again, this was not new as I used string and knots already years back but mostly as research, functional tools or as backgrounds through weaving or creating the ground for a painting or for printing. Painting lies deep within me and is inherited from my parents who worked as architects using drawing and painting actively and grandparents who were both painters alongside Oluf Høst, and other painters of his time. 

Although I do not feel like a natural painter, figuratively speaking - I have as a consequence of the fragmentation of my experiences within my body a very low threshold for the figurative in art, it does not hold true for me to create a whole - I love how colour affects me. I love to feel unsure of what paintings portray - is it or isn’t it? - but also to feel the stringency of composition and material of the paint against the ground. The way paper absorbs and transforms the colour with air, and to take some away only to find new options actively soothes the disparate and alienated parts of me. 

No art technique is easy, any art technique is conquered only with years of practice and oodles of patience. And for me it was never about the technique as the incomprehensibility of my body’s language demanded something else, I had to create something I could live with, which satisfied my need for the intangible, the curiosity of continuous learning, and what you see today, is that. 

How does this artwork fit within your broader body of work or artistic vision?

The INK GRID paintings are a foundational body of work. They were my way of establishing a space from where I could work with the formal elements of colour, composition and techniques - technique being my Achilles heel as expressing that which screamed to express always took me out of technical advancement. However,  some of the work that has taken me by my BEEP and swung me around like hay in an elephant’s trunk is non-technical work. They seem like nature. They behave like water. They just are in and of themselves and feel like achievements. And so not to turn all Buddhist, I like with all the non-alignment and trauma my life has been exposed to, to thread a needle with the idioM of ‘easy does it’ which is often not so easy. As I, like an idioT, often seem to grasp after thin air or overdo a work for fear of something being too little or too easy.  

I call this project an aesthetic of REPAIR/(re)PAIR, as the material fluctuates between what is, what was and what will be, of that which is tangible and intangible, and of that which is visible and invisible. It is an art historical life project that defies convention, judgement and is about overcoming the gap of being female, healing and repairing the disposed pieces of non•vocabulary of that which was shattered through centuries or just a childhood but not through disposal. I work through experimentation and education, suturing and reshaping with the tools of tolerance, composition and the idea of bodily forms and fluids. I will never get there of course, but…