by
Jules Cache
Original
Oil on canvas
70cm x 86cm
Back porch (Cultural Memory)
A drawing from life differs from a photograph by process and content. Time is an important element; whilst I was drawing this scene the shadows moved so that in the finished drawing the content represents a phase of time, an interaction between me and time. Translating the drawing into the painting involved another time element as I was scaling up by freehand as I went along, with no possibility for corrections as the background was still wet. In a sense, the painting of the figure was analogous to speaking in real time, making that the line you are now looking an equivalent of a voice recording.
The painting of the ground, however, could be changed as often as I liked before beginning the figure. Moreover, I altered the content by arranging it more distinctly into sections of contrasting transparent and opaque colours. Thus the application of the ground was more equivalent to writing than talking in that it was analytically organized and subject to revision.
In this painting and the one entitled ‘The book’ I have attempted to characterize the nature my brief for a series of paintings on the same topic as the convention. An element of the phenomenon of cultural history happens in real time, is subjective, and process based, the medium being conversation and group dynamics. Here at the convention, these phenomena are analyzed in writing. Whilst this analogy is by no means comprehensive, it represents my understanding of the essential meaning of the phrase “Remembering to Forget, Forgetting to Remember” as the core dialectic is between the subjective and the objective.
tropics
