The statement I wrote to accompany my current show.
The statement written for my current show.
What is the link between art and memory? The work in this show explores some of the issues behind that simple thought.
A few years ago I made a print that I called 'Dales Memories' versions of which are included in this show. I had no particular place in mind, just the look and feel of the Yorkshire Dales. The formal inspiration came from paintings made in Leeds by Terry Frost but I also drew on childhood memories of family holidays in North Yorkshire. Since then I have made a number of related prints, each inspired not by a specific location but by evocations of specific places and times. This seemed natural to me, especially in printmaking where the artist is almost of necessity removed from the location. I gradually began to realise however that even very location specific works are mediated through memory. Our experiences take place in the here and now, but our recall of them is partial and selective. This seems to be an integral part of being human.
There is a theory that what we remember most about hedonic experiences are their high (or low) points and how they end. Consider a holiday where on the last day you have a traffic accident. Even if no one is hurt we often talk of such experiences as 'ruining the whole holiday'. In fact of course the holiday was not ruined, only the memory of it. The experience of the holiday was almost entirely good, and the bad end did not undo the pleasure found in the preceding period. The belief that a past experience can be ruined is a cognitive illusion caused by the confusion of experience with memory. It is the same illusion that tells us the skies were always blue and the sun always shone as a child, unless it snowed and then it was always soft and white and covered everything. It is not our experiences per se, but the memories of them, the stories we tell ourselves after the fact, that make us who we are in the here and now. The poet William Wordsworth had a concept that he called "Spots of Time" - small, memorable events. According to Wordsworth, these spots have lasting quality and are capable of "lifting us up when we are fallen."
What does this mean for art? Degas is supposed to have said that the subject of art should always be a memory, what is seen in the minds eye. The art critic and writer, Andrew Graham-Dixon, quotes him on the topic
“If I were to run an art school I should take a tall house, and I should put the model and the beginners in the top storey; and as a student's work improved I should send him down a floor, until at last he would work upon the level of the street, and would have to run up six flights of stairs every time he wanted to look at the model.”
The individuality of a work depends not just on the physical body of the artist - the way they move, the way they hold a pen, a brush or a chisel – but also on the processing of their personal experience. The artist's remembrances stand between their experience and their work. By making a physical entity - a painting, a poem or a tapestry – the artist freezes that spot in time and their feelings about it. The object created becomes in turn its own spot, which is left behind for others to experience in their turn. We can never directly access the artist's experience so draw on our own history to interpret their work. In doing so we create the work anew for ourselves – as does everyone who views it.
