2005/06

Artist’s Statement

The suite is directly informed by a braided memory of flights of fancy and a childish question that no adult could obviously answer: Where is Memory stored? Even now Science’s profound knowledge of the Brain, its exact location, can’t be pinpointed.

Having grown up deep in the English countryside, I was intimately familiar with every stream, hillock, and pasture. I, like most, scrutinized the gnarled oak and common dandelion and held leaves up to the sky. On one particular day, I was staggered by the delicate veins of a leaf; its markings seemed to signal an event.  And each new leaf from the same tree intimated a recording of a series of events. They could be distinguished by the subtle shift in line, colour, and form. Memory was stored in the veins of a leaf! I believe Memory to be cellular and therefore ubiquitous. It’s clear a child could not lasso the belief into a coherent question. The suite attempts at coherence, manifesting as Belief only. As an act of will I denied myself cutting edge scientific investigation and, rather, relied on organic, intuitive imagery. The images record a potent personal memory and make no distinction between individual, archival, collective, or genetic memory.

Where is Memory? Is it finite or does it cross into an unknown dimension?

SOLO

The Bellevue Gallery
The Ferry Building Art Gallery
West Vancouver
Acrylics on wood
18 inches tall by 36 inches wide by 4 inches deep