Taking a page from the history of artist’s past, I’ve come to name my current style of painting.
The name MemoRealism takes into account two important aspects of human experience that I believe are paramount in the creation of art that ellicits emotion, reaction and a sense of satisfaction for an artist and inevitably the viewer of that artist’s work. These aspects of human experience, as discussed below are memory and recognition.
In our human experience, memory is one of the most utilized, yet underestimated experiences of our daily lives. It is the constant hum in our brain, continually comparing/associating/estimating. Memory influences every decision we make, whether we are looking to the future or remembering the past, and yet, it is flawed. So many times we’ve been told, the function of memory is not precise. We forget details. We fill in the gaps with other thoughts and memories. This is the human experience of memory; imprecise and fuzzy, detail scraped from the edges.
And though our memories may be imprecise (perhaps because they are imprecise), humans place a high value on the experience of recognition. We are most comfortable if we can go out each day and recognize our surroundings, know where we are going and be familiar with the people with whom we are associating. Humans are predisposed to prefer experiences which can be recognized, experiences that can be pieced together into something familiar in our minds. Most often, this requires an experience that is based in the reality of our everyday.
In the instance of visual art (as for MemoRealism) the viewer of an art-piece requires images that are realistic enough for their minds to recognize the subject matter (the ‘Realism’ of MemoRealism), yet do not require the absolute, precise detail of total reality to be understood (the ‘Memo’ of MemoRealism).
Human experience allows for and can celebrate the gaps in reality. MemoRealism is a study of this.
originally posted 2009/11/05
