MEMORY Remains

Memory is a painting about how one’s mind remembers a past event, which started as a different idea for something else.

At the time, I was struggling with subjects to draw and feeling numb to how I was the seeing the human figure. There was a desire to work but lack of clarity in what I wanted. I decided to take a step back from painting and focused on other things. During this period, I was getting into some gardening, as I wanted to bring some plants into the apartment. I was watching many television programs from the HGTV channel for inspiration around my home. One particular show was a program called” Monty Don’s Italian Gardens.” It was about Italian Renaissance Gardening in the 1500’s, and how classical ideas of Beauty and order were being used in landscaping.

What intrigued me about this was the use of gardening as an art form to make a statement rather than mindless leisure. There was great attention paid to structure and symmetrical space relationships. I would soon also become interested in Topiary, another form in Italian gardening. Topiary is a practice that involves the clipping of trees, shrubs and foliage into shapes and forms. They were often embedded in these garden landscapes. My original inspiration was to work on a design for a personal garden.

Sadly, I found this to be more complicated than I originally thought and decided to shift my intentions away from it. I had troubles focusing and couldn’t really understand why. After a few false missteps, I began to become concerned that I had forgotten everything I learned about painting, and then that is when I had a morbid thought, what would be my last thought, if I was losing my memory?

The aspect of memory, how we remember, was something I had started to question. What we experience and how we see things becomes our memory of it. Something we remember can be more powerful than what actually occurred. The lingering of memory stayed, prompting me to begin drawing and painting again.

I was obsessed with the idea of the distortion of memory, and the last thought. My interest in Italian Renaissance gardening had brought my consciousness back to painting without me realizing it.

For that, I am grateful.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com