About: Artist Camille Ahern

I have always loved color and fiber. Painting on silk and making art quilts bring together these loves in exciting and satisfying ways. Painting in the abstract on silk requires flexibility, quick response and a thorough understanding of the dyes, while quilting is a more structured and sequential process. Together, they combine left- and right-brain activities in delightful ways.

Dyes on silk produce a luminous quality that is unique in its transparency and purity. The colors can be ever so subtle or extremely bold and powerful. They blend and flow into each other in unexpected ways, producing complex layers of color that provide depth, subtlety and movement. The challenge in painting in the abstract on silk is that the silk and the dyes have as much control as the artist. The artist must be flexible enough to literally “go with the flow,” but at the same time exercise immediate artistic control to achieve her vision. Finding the right balance in each painting is both the challenge and the pleasure.

Designing and creating art quilts poses very different challenges. The quilt artist is in control of her materials – fabrics and threads-- but these materials have certain limitations of shape and line. They don’t flow into each other the way dyes flow on silk. On the other hand, quilting provides tremendous opportunities for surface design and texture. I like to juxtapose my hand-painted silk fabrics with commercial cottons in my quilts, and to add depth, complexity and texture through multiple layers of stitchery.

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