Nostalgia and Memory – This semester’s independent study

Posted on May 19, 2015 Updated on March 31, 2018

At the beginning of the my independent study in painting this semester I was asking myself: What do I want to paint now? What do I want to say? Do I want to paint a variety of subject matter, maybe a landscape and a self portrait, things I don’t typically paint?

 While I stressed about subject matter, my wise professor, Roy Nydorf, told me, “Just be painting; all the other questions will take care of themselves.”

I decided I wanted to illuminate little, overlooked objects, vintage toys, random things. I got lost in the details of the things I was painting and the relationships, or possible interactions between the items.

While I enjoyed the details and the suggested narratives, I also enjoyed just what I could do with paint now. I started painting with the idea that it didn’t matter so much what I was painting as how I was painting it. 

As I combined various objects and painted them, stories began to form, memories were evoked. I thought about specific memories and how to reproduce them in paint and what viewers might see, what they would identify with, and how my vague suggested memories might ignite the viewer’s personal memories. I explored the relationship between vision and memory and experience and how these things shape how we see the world, the space or discrepancy between what we see and what we remember, and the pictures in our minds versus the outside world’s images and how they can spark our memories.

So, this body of work turned into combinations of vintage toys in secret little environments, sometimes little pockets in nature, evoking nostalgia and wonder. I found that viewers would look, and smile and/or laugh and say things like: “Wow. That’s weird!” and “I had one of those when I was a kid!” and “You and your creepy dolls!”

I wondered about the role of nostalgia in my work.

What is evoked for you?