The Market Place

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The Market Place, acrylic ink, oil, pigment powder, and liquid gold leaf on terraskin paper, 14 x 20 in. (framed), 2017.

Semantic vs. Episodic, refers to our two different types of memory. Semantic memory refers to a portion of long-term memory, which processes ideas and concepts that are not drawn from personal experience. This includes things that are common knowledge and information that helps us understand the gist of what something is. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events, which includes specific information such as who, what, where, when, why. This type of memory is a collection of past personal experiences. With this series of work I wanted to explore the concepts and dualities of semantic and episodic memory visually, using photographs taken from my family’s photo album and using the knowledge I have of the stories that accompany them. My goal was to try to capture the essence of what a memory truly looks like on paper. I was experimenting with a mixture of ink, pigment powder, vegetable oil, and water to create an abstracted, organic, uncontrolled background within each image. The foreground is composed of a structured, representational, image drawn from the photograph. But neither the background nor foreground are completely separate from each other, they sometimes dissolve into one another. This again relates back to the different types of memory we have, one being a collection of more general abstract notions and the other more detailed and clear but not 100% accurate account of the past. Working with these non-archival materials also allows me to explore how these images will age and eventually disintegrate with time, like real memory.