Q&A: An Interview with Camilla Schön

Do you create art primarily to understand yourself or to be understood by others?

The focus of my artistic practice is exploring my emotions and feelings, primarily to understand myself.

Creating helps me to feel myself more. To develop myself further, to stay grounded, to trust myself. To process my memories, surroundings, feelings, and senses that don’t need to be explained or that can’t always be put into words. Sometimes also to escape into another world and make invisible things visible or depict them.

Before I studied Drawing and Printmaking back in Vienna, the artist Francesca Woodman was a great source of inspiration for me. Her photographs deal with many issues that concern young people, such as relationships, sexuality, questions of identity, body image, alienation, isolation, and confusion or uncertainty about one’s own identity. She explores the relationship between body and space, the confusion of adolescence, and the vulnerability of existence.

A quote of hers still gives me goosebumps because I can identify with it very well.

“Real things don’t frighten me, just the ones in my mind do.”

— Francesca Woodman

Are you more ritualistic or chaotic when it comes to creating art and maintaining your studio practice?

To be honest, it varies. Usually, I tend to be quite organised, but things can also get chaotic at times. Above all, printmaking is my ritual: one step at a time — I prepare my aluminium plate, put the paper in a water bath, set up the printing press, create my screen, prepare all the colours and spatulas, ink my plate with a roller, smudge and wipe off the excess ink with a scrim, and then polish the plate with tissue paper or newspaper. And then I’m ready to print on the press. It's always the same process, and yet in the end there is still a little uncertainty about how the print will ultimately look.

What are your studio crutches?

Music is my faithful companion. I usually listen to it on my speakers, and sometimes I sing along loudly, but at the moment I only listen to my music with headphones because I share my studio with several other artists and, out of consideration for them, I avoid listening to loud music and singing.

How do you feel about juggling the many roles of an artist?

I have to admit, it’s often quite challenging. It was only after I finished my studies that I really understood how much you have to take into your own hands as an artist and that you are also your own personal assistant. Being an artist involves several jobs in itself: creating artworks, setting prices, publishing artworks and writing about them, constantly sending out applications, networking, regular activity on social media, and more…Of course, you can also get some support and funding. My current residency at Studio West has allowed me to achieve a lot and gain more opportunities as an artist.