Camille Warmington uses acts of making to memorialize those who come before us while simultaneously building her own legacy. In this beautiful conversation on today’s episode, Camille shares a story of transformation that embraces each stage in life with thoughtfulness and openness to transformation. Camille studied painting at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and earned a Bachelor of Interior Architecture from Kansas State University. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, and received a Hunting Prize nomination. A mother of three, Camille was born in Massachusetts, grew-up in Texas, and lives and works in New York City and Rhinebeck, NY.
In our conversation, Camille describes her early career as an architect, then a period of leaning into her experience of motherhood, and eventually transitioning to focus on her studio work after the end of her marriage. A woman after my own heart, Camille created art residencies for herself by booking Airbnbs in Santa Fe, NM and Woodstock NY, blocking out time to focus on her art practice. Camille’s embrace of transformation and change didn’t stop with a career switch; now, with adult children out of the house, she and her partner Paul have moved to New York, splitting time between the city and a more rural cabin setting.
All of these transitions are informed by Camille’s early life, and the time spent alongside her mother as she struggled with and eventually passed away from cancer. She describes how her mother would needlepoint in an unhurried and contemplative way while feeling unwell, and how these objects endured for Camille after her death. Camille replicates this slow approach in her paintings with small brushwork that mimic the long and short stitch found in needlework. In this way, she recognizes her mother’s life, cut short by illness, while working in a medium that is her own – painting. She takes landscape images, digitally reduces them to more basic forms and limited color palettes, transfers these images to panel, and uses small brushwork to complete the image with what she calls “a world of small marks” when viewed up close.
These works bring you into the landscapes they represent, attuning the viewer to the details, textures, and chaos. It resonates so strongly with me that Camille’s hand is seen in these tiny marks in her paintings and that they commemorate her mother’s act of embroidering. Camille calls these works “artifacts” because they will outlast her and her children will know that their mother made these marks. This expression of action becomes such a beautiful proof of intergenerational care.
Final Five:
Biggest Art Crush: Joan Mitchell
Dream Trip: Japan
Film or book: Merchant and Ivory Movies – Remains of the Day and Days of Heaven; Reading Rick Rubins, The Creative Act
Favorite meal: Breakfast Taco
Shoutout: Partner Paul, and Kids Mimi, Jack and Margaret
To see more of Camille’s work please visit her website and follow her on IG @camillewarmington
The Artist/Mother podcast is created and hosted by Kaylan Buteyn. You can see more of Kaylan’s work on her website or connect with her on Instagram @kaylanbuteyn
Naoshima No. 19, 2022, acrylic on 4 clayboard panels, 14 x 45.5 overall
Naoshima Fernscape No. 1, 2020, Acrylic on 9, 11 x 14 Clayboard panels
Headshot in front of Naoshima Fernscape No. 1
Works in progress
Cheverny No. 2, 2021, Acrylic on 4, 14 x 11 Clayboard panels
Cheverney No. 2, 2021, Detail panel 1
East Coast Groundscape No. 1, 2021, acrylic on 4 clayboard panels, 28.5 x 22.5 overall
Looking at Art, 2017, Winter Street Studios, Houston
If They See What’s Broken Will They Love Me, 2015, Acrylic on panel, 12 x 12
