Amnesia is a project with the purpose of triggering a contextual shift from the cognitive to the creative mind within my audience through a series of acrylic paintings. The viewer is transformed by a transition from a world of context and definition into a space where colour, line and saturation are no longer attached to intellectual interpretation, but rather to an emotional experience. Amnesia is the absence of memory. We go through life attaching aesthetic definitions to objects and spaces because we are taught to remember these in a specific way. A wilting flower is not as attractive as a flower in full bloom; a wall or sidewalk littered with decay and dirt provokes disgust and we veer away from these spaces. I aim to deconstruct these notions and find relevance in the composition of line, colour and contrast in images that would normally trigger a negative reaction, without giving names to these aesthetic emotions. In my opinion, it provides a safe space to rest our intellectual need for meaning and focusses our mind on being. Being in the moment, letting go, experiencing a relationship with our visual self that is void of preconceived definition.

The project Amnesia was realised in winter 2019/spring 2020 in an effort to detach myself from the figurative world.

The painting DECAY embodies my creative process throughout this project, layering acrylic paint, paper collage and charcoal on cotton canvas to achieve a personal escape from social convention and structure.