Remembering what went before

Title: "A path of memories"

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If my memory is serving me well, a year ago today I met the lovely JM Golding in person, after a protracted correspondence of sorts on Flickr. Jacki was visiting my town as part of a family vacation prompted by the acceptance of her wonderful toy camera images into a gallery show here. She wrote to me suggesting we meet up, and we spent an afternoon together exploring the coast and this local park with our cameras in hand. It's an interesting experience to take a fellow artist to some of your favourite locales, and to observe how that person views the landscape that is so familiar to you. Whenever I walk in this park, I remember the time we spent here - I was focused on the trees and bushes for the most part, while Jacki was watching for interesting reflections in the pools of water, which made me start to consider the possibilities of those reflections as well. We've maintained an active correspondence on art and life since that day which I've really benefited from. Yesterday I found myself in the same park, with fond memories of a year ago inspiring this image.

The Flood

Title: "It all came rushing back"

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There are times when fuzziness in memory is not amusing - you can't remember someone's name, you feel it's on the "tip of your tongue" but the harder you try to remember, the more frustrated you become. Remembering cold, hard facts leaves no room for empathy. Yet many of our childhood memories are woven from things that really happened, those we imagined happened (or were exaggerated in our minds at the time), and those we only have the vaguest recollection of. We usually don't mind this imprecision, in some ways perhaps we welcome the opportunity for embellishment that the fuzziness offers. I look at this image, and I am immediately transported back to childhood walks in the forest; not one walk in particular but an omnibus impression of them all. There is a great deal of comfort in this memory.