Dorothea Van Camp



 

Dorothea Van Camp has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design, and attended the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning for graduate studies in printmaking. 

She has shown extensively in the northeast, and most recently her work was included in The Boston Printmakers North American Biennial, Fresh Ink: Contemporary Explorations in Printmaking at The Umbrella Arts Center, and Singular and Serial: Expanding the Circle at Cove Street Arts.

In a review of Van Camp’s 2021 show Breach, Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe writes:

“In Dorothea Van Camp’s painting/screenprint hybrids, upholstery and wallpaper patterns heave, twist, and flutter in unnervingly indeterminate spaces. The designs resound with household familiarity, but the way she pushes them insists on tension and change. She evokes rites of passage and the life cycle they usher us through.

These paintings hold a lot; in grief, hope and in hope, grief. The sheer propulsiveness of some of the patterns keeps the works from feeling sodden or sentimental, removing them from placid domestic interiors like the tornado carrying Dorothy off to Oz — while at the same time delivering us into the true, aching drama of life at home.

One plant dies and another flowers. We are wrecked; we are rejuvenated. Life goes on.”

Where the wallpaper patterns become sheer drama, by Cate McQuaid
Art review, The Boston Globe, June 25, 2021

Van Camp’s work is included in numerous collections, including State Street Bank, Federal Reserve Bank, Bank of America, Wellesley College and Mellon Bank.

The printed mark has always been an important presence in my work. In recent years I have been using vector-based computer drawings to suggest, among other things, the intersection of body with technology. 

I find the intricate line work of these drawings helps to reconcile an attraction to the etched or engraved line of printmaking, old master drawings, and moody chiaroscuro with our own era.