American, b. 1960
Melted 4, 2008
Watercolor and acrylic on paper
Private collection
Cynthia Camlin uses a variety of media, including print making and video, to create ethereal images of dissolving ice. In Melted 4, from her series of watercolors titled Extremities, the artist reveals the formation beneath the waterline. She makes palpable the fact that the tip of the iceberg represents only one-eighth of its volume. Camlin presents a cross section of the iceberg’s inner core through a network of geometric forms that suggests the crystalline nature of freezing water.
Inspired by Frederic Edwin Church’s (American, 1826–1900) iceberg sketches, Camlin updates the sublime landscape tradition. Her unusual view springs from the imagination and the technique that she developed to evoke the ever-changing aspects of frozen formations. After spontaneously dropping opaque watercolors into pools of water dripped on the paper, she discovers and then begins defining the iceberg’s forms. This chance-based process becomes a metaphor for the life of an iceberg.