MEMORY ILLUSIONS

My art and research practice often involves how memory functions and how we store and recall memories of our past. Memory plays an essential part in how individuals and groups construct their identities, yet our memories are fleeting. What is a memory? I search for memories but find them elusive as people often confuse their imagination with their memory. There are many elements that influence our imaginations including the stories we tell ourselves while looking at old family photographs. Old photographs might hint at a long-forgotten memory, but they can also distort memory and become a false memory implantation.

In my current series Memory Illusions, the sense of a memory is directed by my collection of found amateur photographs. In these paintings, the flatness of specific areas hint at a shaky recollection, a moment in time captured yet incomplete. Heightened areas of realism suggest an importance, but are they important? Or are these areas just a reflection of the memory taken by the camera, a posed moment, perhaps untrue to the real story. What is the true story? Photographs help people imagine details that can get confused with reality. These paintings pause time, like an illustrated story, hinting at what will happen next. Who will move suddenly, who will cry, who will drop a popsicle, who was excluded from the image? The bright colors and patterns push and play and have an illusive effect that defies the fading reality and creates a new story to supplant the old one. So, I ask, what can you really remember?