‘Traces of a youth remembered: externalising memory’ is a studio based investigation that focuses on the chaos and vulnerability of adolescence through the scope of my own memories.  The intention is to communicate the subjective experience through gestural paint work and intense emotive colour.
 

A key aspect of this project is the nature of memory and its conceptualisation.  The re-consolidation of memories means that they are always open for interpretation and through the passage of time memories and their context, change.  The response to revisited memories can alter in comparison to how they were experienced at the moment of inception.

The movie Kids (1995) by Larry Clark acts as a quasi-recollection of my own adolescent experience.  Kids becomes the point of reference, although not the factual events, facilitates the remembering process and subsequently becomes the source for the paintings.

A key focus in this project is the facilitation of change as well as the memories that have lost their clarity over time, this facet of memory provides a framework for the project.  The fragmented concept of memory informs the visual interpretation.  Through devices such as dragging paint to obliterate the imagery, intimate scale and the pushing and pulling of paint leaves traces of the personal connection to the unsettling experience of adolescence.