Flight Pattern, 2022

Collage on canvas

Memory is a shapeshifter, affected by the gentle nudges and hearty blows of not only our own bias but that of the people around us. The people who knew us when. The people fuzzy in the background, or front and center.

While going through wisps of yellowed, broken-edged childhood artwork as an adult, I discovered a narrative that was not just my history, but that of my mother. The bits of my youth and my becoming that she deemed worthy of remembrance comprised the collection. And in it, I touched a tender spot of who she was as a mother from my adult perspective, myself a mother now and full of empathy and knowing.

The experience was thought provoking around the idea of memory as well. What is ours. What belongs to the collective. What has been bestowed on us but those that looked after us. And the trustworthiness of our memory.

This piece represents the fractal patterns of family, life stages, relationship and humanity. Flight Pattern is an exercise, an attempt to capture that fleeting feeling of what was, and the new discoveries of what was. A readjustment of the history book of me. And a personal autobiography that turns out could also be named a biography.