Our memories are very precious and on occasions they are all we have of a place, person or event. Photographs and other means of recording may not have captured the moment but our minds do. Often in collective memory different details and perspectives contribute to the assembling and coherence of a shared experience, but it is our personal, individual memory that fascinates me. How we often lucidly remember what we were doing at the moment of a seismic event, "the day John Kennedy died" or 9/11, but also on hearing our own tragic news.
Thankfully memories are also beautiful and attempt to capture the magnificence of a transient moment and preserve it for our future enjoyment. Memories are treasure, a seam of gold in our minds, a huge library of moments that come back to life on our request and sometimes share a teaching for our benefit.
My paintings explore this richness and at the same time play with memory, using "cut-up" techniques and juxtaposition so that a new and surprising narrative can emerge. Suddenly memory is given a new role to play, improvisational, unpredictable even confrontational.