Artist Statement

Cameron Zebrun / 2025 Artist Statement
I am a mature artist who has been creating works of art for myself for most of my life. Making artwork continues to challenge and vitalize my life and plays an essential role in my well-being. My ever-evolving fascination with portraying landscape subject matter in abstract and non-traditional ways continues to energize and motivate me. By observing and collecting images, experiences, emotional responses, and ideas inspired by the natural world, I record the intimate patterns and forces that nature enacts on the environment, the essence of nature's abstract forms is what interests me the most. Recently, my engagement with the natural world has become more inclusive in its focus, drawing on many sources, science, history, and deep time. Not only am I using my personal experiences and observations of our environment as inspiration, but there is also an examination of geological time and its effects on the land as well as our need as humans to catalog, interrupt, and conquer our environment and the impact of climate change brought on by human activities. My practice is focused on sculpture which examines our environment through layers of context. My sculptures are often described as defying categorization; they are neither wholly painting nor sculpture, although they embody both processes. My commitment to fine craftsmanship when building these pieces serves to strengthen my vision. The design and composition of my sculpture are inspired by the forms, textures, light, color, and shapes found in nature. My sculptures are fabricated from wood and painted with oils, watercolor, and collage. My audience responds to my sculpture’s coloration, mysterious abstract compositions, and unique form. The convex shapes I use suggest abstract representations of kayaks, surfboards, and arched forms found in nature, the edge of a waterfall, the profile of a mountain ridge, or the crest of a wave. I also reference the language of cartography and topography on my sculpture’s surfaces.
As for my collage work, I use photography to record my observations and experiences in nature. Over the years I have acquired a vast catalog of images, both original and found. These images are used for reference tools in the studio and also to create stand-alone works of art. Using computer software to manipulate, combine and create compositional elements to my photographs, I create complex compositions that suggest a narrative that is open to personal interpretation. The process of creating my collages is an intuitive process of image selection, composition design and final refinement.