Memory of a Memory

I’ve always been prone to nostalgia. I’ve cried at every single graduation, every goodbye to a friend, and even to a particularly beautiful sunset. When I look back in the remembrance of a memory, rarely can I picture it fully and objectively. When I think back to my own childhood, I’m immediately accosted by emotion, by feeling. I wanted to paint these feelings, to memorialize that moment in time. How did it feel to take a nap in my backyard underneath the dappled sunlight? To look at the most beautiful sunset I’d seen in my life (yes the same one I cried to), knowing I’d never be in that moment again? Can you hear the laughter ringing in your ears as you skip across the beach in the orange glow of an evening?

This body of work functions as a giant collage, anchored by three large digital prints pieced together from different times in my life. Primarily focusing on my childhood, it is interspersed with an amalgamation of mixed media. Employing architectural, abstract, and figurative elements, cutouts, blurs, and texture, I seek to evoke the essence of a memory rather than its accuracy. My childhood is bathed in a technicolor light, informing my bright, saturated, primary-focused color palette.
As the light filters through the cutout of the window grills from my home, the shadows intertwine with the different layers and colors. Both revealing and obscuring the past and leaving me with only memories of memories. A recognition of the universal experience of time and a gentle reminder to cherish each present moment.