My work gives visual context to perception. A piece of our human experience is the ability to create context and correlations between two dissimilar ideas. In particular, my current body of work explores the commonalities identity and relationship have with flora and color. More recently, the work I have created centers the idea of “people of color” as a way to separate skin tone from the vibrancy of our human experience.
History has been written attempting to capture and make something fleeting permanent. Life, in all its forms, is transient. Paintings, handwritten notes, photographs, and videos were created to document the idea that our lives are important, if only to one observer. The key player in this process is perception. Where one person may see something meaningless and mundane, another may see a cherished and beloved memory–precisely recalling how that moment made them feel. So, taking cues from surrealism and magical realism artists, I explore ideas such as love, beauty, strength, and existence itself using personal and cultural symbols.
Flowers, in particular, have a similar quality in their necessity to life, beauty, and transience while maintaining a relationship to every other living thing in some capacity. The symbolic meaning given to individual species and colors assists in building the narrative each painting conveys. My work will continue to explore perception, identity, and sentience in a historical context. Hopefully, my contribution can start an internal conversation that allows one to confront these themes in his or her own life.
About the Artist
Camyljah Giddens is a Georgian gardener and artist with work focusing on shared human experiences and relating those with flowers. She graduated from Albany State University with a concentration on Fine Art in 2017. After graduation, Giddens shared her education and experience with children as a Visual Arts Teacher. As a mother and gardener, Camyljah enjoys creating beautiful experiences with her family and friends. Art for her serves as a documentation of the experience of the temporary.
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Exhibition Artwork
Browse all of the artwork from the exhibition by scrolling through the gallery below. Artwork may be available for purchase, contact the Arts Council for more information.