The Memory Keepers
This collection explores time and memory through my own experience of revisiting a significant place years later. These paintings convey a dreamlike experience of being connected to past present and future at once. It explores the way a person can change over time, becoming different versions of themselves.
I’m fascinated with the idea that you could be a different person in the past, the present, and the future, and yet also the same person.
While painting the collection, I came across this poem by T.S. Eliot, which ended up inspiring most of the painting titles.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
- Burnt Norton I, T.S. Eliot
Once I found this poem, my direction for the collection became clear. I had already painted the largest painting I’ve ever done, which became the title piece of the collection. “The Memory Keepers” portrays the transcendence of time; a surreal moment of connection where time stands still. The following paintings represent each form of time; past, present and future.
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