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Through working on these series of paintings that deal specifically with memory, I almost wonder if it has something to do not necessarily with memetics, ( because it's not looking at a particular space and place of objects like a memory theatre would have), but it may have to do with the evolution of memory or the re-invention of memory.
Take this beginning of Threshold
I feel like there is an evolution happening, even if it's not conscious. The first of the series shows no light, i.e. nothing but that raw umber and then slowly as if it is seen through a camera, the light filters into the aperture and all of a sudden there is a light. And that light grows and becomes something bigger. This expansion makes me think of a type of evolution-contracting and expanding and changing over time.
I'm thinking in some respects to William Christenberry and how his images change and grow and become something else. I think it's note worthy to look at his work:
here is his evolution as a change over time ( though mine isn't directly a change over time, it has a sense of this kind of change)
you can see the vine beginning to over take the house in Building with False Brick Siding (Christenberry takes a photograph every 10-20 years of the same building over an extended period of time...watch it's transformation/evolution perhaps?)
I sense there is an evolution and also a transformation. I'm interested if memories do the same as an image does. Do our memories have a transformational power that can change the way we see something? I think so...
So I think there's an evolution/transformation happening in my work that I'm working to understand.
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I wonder if I take one of my paintings that I have done and get rid of the subject/figure or get rid of the background -what does that do to the image itself? And what does that do to the idea of memory?
Does it fragment it? Does it change it completely/transform it and so it doesn't fragment it, because it's a completely new idea? Or does it not affect the image or the idea of the memory behind it?
Those are the questions I am in interested in answering...
stay tuned. I am going to try this idea of getting rid of the background in one image or making it fuzzy and then continue the series to create an 'in focused' image.
or what happens when the background is fuzzy and the foreground is not and vice versa?
I'm thinking specifically of what I'm now calling "Pivot Point" and "Roses"
In other words, here is a more clear explanation:
'feel' like I've finished Threshold though, it is important to look with a critical eye and see if they 'feel' / are finished.
But I sense it is. I finished the last 6 mini paintings in this series.
Please let me know what you think.
If it's not clear, I am interested in using the background of "Pivot Point" and "Roses" and erasing entirely the people/the figure or even the traces of the silhouettes of people.
And what does that do to the image?
Does it make you feel like there is something missing/a sense of humanity has been erased or does it make you feel indifferent as if nothing substantially has changed? And it doesn't feel like there's a sense of loss, emptiness, and/or fragmentation.
I'm interested in these types of phenomenons.
And what happens if I apply the same ideas that I used in Bride and Threshold and now apply it to a sense of landscape, a sense of a specific background and what does that do to the object of interest/focal point/figure/foreground and what does that do to the background?
And what if in the Bride Portrait, I start using the kind of memory games that "Art of Memory" by Frances Yates talks about, in terms of placement of objects. I'm thinking of creating 3 portraits that are different sizes that are of the same image, but as the image gets smaller more objects are added on to each consecutive image/portrait. Though this sounds counter-intuitive, I sense it's not, because if as Frances Yates speaks about it and other authors that have written about memory, the more specific the space is, the better someone will remember it. And so I wonder if that goes for the containment of space. So as the Bride Portraits gets smaller, so too does the containment of space and conversely, the objects in their numbers increase, while at the same time, the objects in their size diminish and become smaller as the picture frame is smaller in its size. So that the objects are defined by a very small space, but because of their close proximity, one might remember worse as the picture frame gets smaller and smaller and there is an increase of the number of objects as each consecutive image gets more and more filled with objects. Though, it is true that these objects would be located in a specific location ( loci) the objects would start to pile onto each other, because of this close proximity. These objects are too close together. As a result, I wonder if the mind/memory/perception/eyes may not be able to distinguish/identify these objects because they start to blend together similar to the previous series I've done. But instead of having an 'unfocused' 'focused' look as I used specifically with my previous series, these portraits would start to blending together in a spatial way that retains this idea of 'unfocused' and 'focused' concept but without the perception of an unfocused/focused lens, this would be purely spatial in its development of so many objects together that it crowds the picture frame completely. Or it may be just a couple of objects but how they are placed, creates an unrecognizable clutter of objects. Or does it?
It's interesting how people learn. Some people learn by space and others learn by visuals. And some learn by both or none of the above. And how we learn is part of memory. So if the objects are so close together, that even if they have a specific location, but our eyes cannot identify them because they are 1. too small. 2. too close together. 3.too many objects. I wonder if we become overwhelmed with too much 'little details' that we can't figure it out and we become frustrated. And we then 'lose that memory' or somehow it doesn't cognitively compute with our brain or our understanding of what we are looking at doesn't make sense for whatever reason. I think that's an interesting notion.
And so it's using two swords against each other so to speak, like a double-edged sword, where there is not enough explanation nor information to gather and make a judgment, whereas Simonides was able to identify the bodies not by how they looked but by where they were placed, whereas I am looking at how objects looked ( not fragmented or crushed) but unlike Simonides I can only rely on the visual memory of what these objects were, because I don't have the location component defined as well as Simonides had in his ability to identify placement (loci). My objects would be so close together in the smaller oval canvas, they may be unidentifiable or they may be recognizable even given such close proximity. And I think it would be interesting to have these objects look like each other. For example a woman could be holding white bells that look similarly to the white tulips she has in her hands...or they may be of what Yates refers to as word association issues: like for instance putting a microwave next to a refrigerator but both are white but both are also different sizes, yet they are both rectangles-one horizontal and the other vertical in its position.
These kinds of things interest me greatly. So I wonder that in this way, it can almost be a game of some sort of testing one's memory-to see if one can remember even if the placement is very close, can one still remember the objects and be able to identify the objects separately from each other?
This is something I think worth investigating more fully through Bride Portrait.
Here they are:
so I'm interested in what happens when...
I get rid of the subject in the foreground or in the background, does it create the image to have an empty feeling- as if something is lost ( I'm thinking specifically Sophie Calle in her Exquisite Pain, where she feels so at a loss that she goes around and asks all the women she can what a heart break feels like and what they did to deal with that)
( I'm looking at my Pivot Point and Roses as this is my reference to what I mentioned above)
Though, I'm not asking anyone how they feel about something lost...I wonder if the image will speak for itself or if it just feels like something is missing or if that something is missing-is it a big deal?
The memory philosophers would say it is. I wonder what others will say.
Let's see what happens.
Write soon. :)
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