artist statement draft
The scent of a perfume… a colour, a faded photograph or postcard can trigger memories of long forgotten experiences. Memory is elusive. It doesn’t exist as a physical medium that can be held or touched. Rather it exists as a complex set of processes… constructions and relationships within the brain. It can be thought of as a powerful group of systems, which create, store and recall experiences. The system is able to reassemble disparate memory impressions from the network of cells scattered throughout the brain. As learning takes place synaptic connections between existing cells are reinforced rather than the creation of new nerve cells. The brain has a plasticity that allows it to rewire connections with each new experience from the senses. These collective relationships become documents of experiences, ‘memories’, of one’s ongoing life. They tie the past with the present, and provide a framework for the future. With age, falters in connections begin occurring in our 20s making it increasingly difficult to retrieve information such as remembering someone’s name.
Our insecurity about our ability to remember has led to the creation and reliance on technology to capture and store experiences. Painting’s initial role as documenter was superseded by the invention of the camera by Fox Talbot in 1939. In 2009, a CEA study, Digital Imaging: A Focus on Sharing, reported consumers snapping an average of 72 digital photos at recent events they attended, sharing 51% of them via email and social networking sites such as Facebook. We take pictures of ourselves in front of monuments we have visited, buy postcards to send back home to say we were here, all to make an intangible experience into something real and meaningful.
A photograph is a trace of an actual event and paintings are man-made constructions. Although photography is the preferred medium to capture and trigger memories, I am exploring how paintings may be used in a similar way. Often when we remember events and experiences from the past, they are part truth, part fiction. I am interested in how we perceive and reinterpret our own experiences. We highlight, distort and reinforce things we want to remember and the rest falls away.
In my practice, I am currently exploring these ideas through two different visual forms…
