| The sea is ever changing. And with change comes destruction as well as rebirth. Years ago I skirted death out at sea by using my wits and only now with time and distance can I reflect on that memory. This act of looking back on our actions, looking through the lens of time, this introversion helps us survive by helping us discover secret lessons within our mistakes. Lessons are hard to come by, experiences we stumble into, but the lessons can elude us for years. I am a painter, and this thesis explores my relationship with my memory and the paintings that are a result of them. Throughout history, people have time and again used their memories to create art, and in turn used art to create new memories. I explore here why artists, critics, and I, do the same. But I also explore this simple idea in the light of my strange relationship with my own memory, a compromised one. Early childhood meningitis robbed me of the faculty of memory one would call normal at a very early age. This distortion of the normal processes of my memory makes me unique, however, and my accommodations over time have given me a novel approach to painting in relation to the things I wish to remember. What if the things I leave behind will be forgotten? What if I could, instead, enshrine the memories I wish? Could I physically weave my own life together with a series of important memories? What if these paintings or augmented memories will now be my only record of my life, not only for myself after my true memory has left me, but for others too? What would this say to those trying to understand me, and would this enable them to better relate to their own loss of time? Essentially, like most people, I am melancholic about the loss of time all around me. But due to my compromised memory, I am well aware that the time I do have is extremely precious. And one way or another, intentionally or unintentionally, my paintings reflect that. I may have survived that day out at sea, but immediately back on the beach my mind did all it could to forget the near-drowning incident. Now, however, looking back years later my memory of the incident is crystal clear, and there are lessons I clearly mine from that memory today. Perhaps my paintings are the same. A record, or memory of a feeling, an incident, a moment of curiosity, that only till much later, will truly make any sense in the overall stretch of my life. Only time will tell. But perhaps one day my audience will be able to tell too, and, hopefully, they will let me in on the secret. |
