The People Who...

What is the visual language of memory? How long before the impression of a memory is reduced to a wash of color and movement? These are the questions contemplated in this series.

Drawing upon personal recollections and source material, memories are gathered from loved ones long gone. By deliberately obscuring distinctive features, the viewer can contemplate their own experience of loss.

The transition from vague representation to the abstract is to complete that journey by reducing the image to a pure display of color, shape, and light. By doing so, the artist’s hope is for the viewer to reflect upon time, impermanence, and the joy of the moment.

The central, unifying structure draws from physical and visual elements of Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism.

The central, rotating spindles are meant to resemble prayer wheels and incorporate the paintings' color palette. The flags, resembling prayer flags, bathe the space with color and shadow. The physical resemblance to the structure of a neuron, the biological conduit of sensory information and memory, is intentional.

All of these elements are crowned by a wheel, a symbol of the cyclic nature of time and impermanence.

You are invited to deposit thoughts, prayers, names, and personal memories into the central cylinder and rotate it clockwise. In traditional belief, this ritual “sends” these thoughts and intentions into the universe.