There are around 50 of these canvases in all and I continually paint over the images, working in a stream of conciousness way.
I feel that I live quite intensely in my head, generating ideas and liable to go off at a tangent .. I have been attempting to represent in a large work in the studio, how memory is stored, linked and organised as layers and pockets of information. I believe that the images taking shape on these canvases are a result of the seeking process of the large work which I think of as a kind of memory trove, or mine.
When working in this manner both on the large work and on the small canvases, sometimes information flows from actual experience and from cultural life coming to the surface of my mind and onto the drawing and then may fade away or may be covered over. Some information seems to have a deeper and unexplained presence.
Reminiscence
My approach to ideas of memory has been influenced by working for 15 years with older people as a nurse and as a reminiscence worker. I observed the benefits and healing effect for people who were suffering but were given the opportunity of revisiting and coming to terms with their past, telling stories sometimes making pictures. The personal sense and meaning of the life cycle are more clearly unfolded by those who have nearly completed it – the nature of the forces shaping life and the effect of life events.
