Barely a Trace no. 1- 20 (sketches and colored papers from 1992-2022) 

A series of drawings that combine sketches and colored papers created from 1992-2022. It represents my entire artistic process because it fluidly moves between one location and another and one media and another. Between documenting or recording the space via measurement and distance on a site to remembering the color and light through stroke and motion that brought me there in the first place. I am also very interested in the idea of how our brain remembers and an important part of my life as an artist is remembering through drawing and painting on location. I can’t create the work I create without those experiences. My brain doesn't remember in a linear fashion. I can be working on location in Southern Maryland and be thinking about Italy, or be working in my studio, looking out my window and see connections between that and work I made in 1992. From a personal perspective, dementia has affected my family. Sometimes the memories from long ago combine with the experiences we are currently having in a beautiful way. I am happy to have my father with me now. The way he remembers things from the past as if they are happening now is similar to the way I create in the studio, and this a beautiful experience  as long as you don’t try to recreate the initial memory. You can see why I am not sure I want to include that, but it is about enjoying the here and now. As a young mom, I could be sad about not being able to travel like I used to or I can let my past inform my experiences now to create new work and new memories. As an academic, I could have been sad that my career took me to a rural area rather than a city or I could find meaning in the place where I landed. The only other thing I would say is that in relation to the work itself, there are some drawings that are incredibly clear and some that are quite faded. And there is newer work that is barely a fragment of an experience and it is literally in the work itself, these separate events are held together loosely with tape, a material that is used to temporarily attach something. Tape is not something you use to combine things forever and ever, usually. And this current version of these memories will not remain forever either. Our experiences are temporal and when noticed, quite powerful. 

Click any image below to view larger.