Artworks

Artist Notes

“But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”

- Marcel Proust

I am interested in the transformative processes and influences that manufactured and natural forces have on altering their environments. Markings, such as signs of decay and wear, created by environmental conditions, provide contextual substance, as they reverberate a space and distill its instinctive vitality. For me, these markings read as clues to its history and provide a glimpse into past interactions. They function as a tool to discern the passing of time, as duration.

In researching ways of understanding time, I came across the French Philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). He proposed that time can be classified into two forms — internal and external. As humans, we tend to oscillate between them. External time is quantitative, meaning that it uses spatial unit markers — such as seconds, hours, days — that separate and count the passing of time. These ways of time-marking help us operate as a society. Clock-time is a social construct designed to help us catch the train on time (literally). And with such, our lives are broken down into numbers. We are constantly aware of “the time”, as a reminder of what we should be doing and where we should be. It’s a system that functions on a linear, surface-level plane of existance, outside of ourselves and bodies.

Clocks and calendars schedule us, but they also distort our true nature of reality. In his 1889 doctoral thesis Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience), Bergson theorized that time exists on its own, purely and unsupported by the supposed structures of Newtonian physics. Wherein intellect turns to matter (science), intuition turns inward (the self). Intellect is characterized by rational and objective reasoning in order to comprehend life. This runs contrary to intuition, which is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. Instinct is molded on the very form of life and being.

Lived time cannot be counted in spacial units. It’s an internal and qualitative time that is not linear. There is flow and flux. His key argument suggested that when we experience things in duration then we are perceiving things directly. These ideas really resonated with how I prefer to experience life and I shape my art practice. Duration implies that everything is in a constant process of change; a process of tightening and contraction. The past evolves into and penetrates the present. As a believer in freewill, Bergson presented that the past is real and future is unpredictable. Inner life’s free flow of time is the key to human freedom. This becomes the touchstone of human individuality. He emphasizes that there is novelty in evolution, as it is always in the state of becoming, constantly bringing us wholly new forms.

Many authors in the early 20th century were influenced by Henri Bergson’s philosophy. A foundation in Bergson theory gives context to Marcel Proust’s “In Search for Lost Time” (À la recherche du temps perdu). Throughout the text, Proust demonstrates his mastery of controlling and playing with time. Time goes slow and time goes fast. Proust describes one simple moment for hundreds of pages and then full events are revealed within the span of a sentence. For being the longest book ever written, it is arguably a very uneventful novel. The dominate theme is the persistence of memory, as divulged through inner dialogue, overcoming mental crossroads. Proust’s writing style provides a sensory experience with underlying involuntary memory. The narrator’s thoughts mimic the mundane flow of everyday life, and evolution of days and years gone by, while brilliantly extracting poetic reflections and perspectives.

By peering through the Proustian lense, these paintings, Edifice of Time, reflect the irregular rhythms of life. The series borrows its name from Proust's own words, wherein he describes the power of persistent memory and its ability to evolve and exist beyond itself. In the process of creating these paintings, time is marked by the drying of paint, unpredictable and dependent on the heat of the day. With no predetermined path and open to uncertain conditions, a puddle of watery paint pigment is encouraged to take form upon the slanted studio floor in which it lays. My methodology is instinctual and the trajectory of each work is influenced by environmental effects. It invites time as a medium and glorifies slow, everyday action. And yet, it is also informed by (muscle) memory and the (learned) intuition of an artist trained in her practice. In duration the past influences the present, not as static state of affairs, but as dynamic processes.

“… time is something. Therefore it acts. What can it be doing? Plain common sense answered: time is what hinders everything from being given at once”

- Henri Bergson

The paintings are built on of many layers. The gestural markings, overlapping shapes, transparent layers of shades of white, and thick textures in my paintings become a portal into the sequential stages of its development. The viewer’s participation allows the paintings to exist into the present. Like a story, you can read the questions, responses, reactions, and tangents emerging as the piece unfolds; one expressive moment leading to the next. This highlights the liminal spaces and interstices between moments, while hinting at our unfixed position in temporal space. Time is identified as being in flux. While examining traces of the past, it is clear that they too are impermanent and evolving.