Memory, matter and painting: a critical model dissertation examining my painting practice

My key exploration revolves around memory as in-flux and ever-present, and I will try to invoke the significance of painting, because unlike other mediums, by the nature of its material qualities and physical processes, it has allowed me to explore ideas of the elusive, and fragmentary nature of memory and time. Through the slow, more poetic and chance-induced processes afforded by the materiality of paint, I am able to capture the more nuanced, textural, and preverbal sensations that relate to broader narratives of my identity. By this, I mean, a notion of identity that is not necessarily bound up by the specifics of my traits, culture, sex, age, etc., but is inclusive of these as part of a more fluid system that make up my personal, phenomenological sense of self that recognises its agency through the granular experience of every day, apart from the wider society. This resonates with Michel Henry’s phenomenology of affectivity and immanence, where he describes memory as deeply intertwined with the personal, subjective experience of life, with the inclusion that memory is an embodied experience, aligning with Henri Bergson’s view on how sensory and spatial experiences are integral to memory and perception. […] I hope to unpack this special interest in photography and in addition I will be referencing artists who have been key to my development, including the works of Phoebe Unwin, Mamma Andersson, Gwen John, Pierre Bonnard, and the writings of artist Emma Talbot, who, in their own practices and material research have allowed me to articulate the affect of painting and the reciprocity between photography and painting in my work; the significance of their combined material presence/afterlife and their generative conceptual and material scope, which has provided me with a framework and jumping-off points that continue to necessitate and sustain my desire to paint.