No matter which scenes an individual remembers, they all mean something relevant to that person, though he or she might not necessarily know what they mean. – Maurice Halbwachs
In Space and Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs identifies that “every collective memory unfolds within a spatial framework,” and it is the lasting impression of place through travel, habitation, imagination, and thought which aids one in conjuring the past. I utilize landscape in order to detangle the randomness of memory as well as provide balance between a straightforward method of painting and something that hints at narrative, feeling, or symbolism. I find images for reference by combing through my photo archives, travel logs and sketches, or what Siegfried Kracauer would describe as “a jumble that consists partly of garbage.” I usually take multiple pictures of the same scene in order to notice later what I was looking at or for.
Kracauer describes “significance” as going beyond spatial and temporal limitations, eventually turning fragments of memory into unconscious truth. Landscape lends itself well as tangible space into abstraction, the “wordless thought” that James Turrell has identified behind creating a sense of seeing within atmosphere. This drifting away from subject into more formal concerns of painting is the respite within the confusion and desire to recreate the memory, ultimately revealing more about the present than the past.
As a painter and personally, I am hyper aware that each place I find myself in is influenced by subtle familiar signals, and my exploration of landscape is an act of foraging through memory to find something before it is forgotten.