This piece is my first commissioned work of 2024. I was asked to create a painting reflecting a particular photo taken of the sunset in Turks and Caicos on an unforgettable trip. There was no way I could make something look exactly like it, but I knew there was a way I could make something feel just the same. To feel just like something else requires the remembrance of that thing to which the feeling is related. In order to be triggered, there must be present some part of, or some aspect of a memory’s essence. Immediately, I knew that what mattered most was color, its vibrance, and its life, and what mattered least was matching exactly the forms of those elements that made up the original picture.

For memory is so influenced by everything that an event becomes associated with, by all that occurs after it has. Memory is never complete, in that it never absolutely reflects the actuality upon which its truth depends. Memory can only come back together, and every time it does, it will bring more with it, and different too, maybe more of the same, perhaps even less. To demonstrate the idea of what memory does not need, I separated into two halves the 319 lines that make up the piece’s dense fabric of paint.

We do not need completeness, every detail, full vision, total certainty, absolute knowledge, in order to reconnect with what brought us joy once before, the moments that left us looking around at those with which they were shared, the life inside our heart pulling everything back together again. There is no need for the colors to complete the image by meeting in the middle. We will complete it for them the moment we see ourselves there, fire-footed, running with the feeling we had that day on our feet, in the direction of gratitude over its first becoming.