On Art + Memories
Jeanine Sobell Pastore’s Orange and Red Pear
“I find it both curious and compelling that the moments of our lives are punctuated by visual images that, over time, become permanently embedded in the experience.”
As a former photographer and someone who has spent their life immersed in visuals, this line that I read recently from a Debbie Millman essay (“Hello Dolly” in Millman’s book, Look Both Ways) really resonated with me. Similar to the way in which she describes these “visual mementos” in her essay, I have a catalog of my own pictorial moments that I can recall easily or that unexpectedly bubble up to the surface. I’ve always been fascinated by my brain’s ability to so clearly recollect a moment in time - one that is significant or seemingly insignificant - and appreciated contemplating that visual cues to memories can be a deeply innate recollective experience for many.
Millman goes on to describe our connection to art through our own visual memories:
“We process our emotions, in part, through images. I’m certain this is why we are both drawn to and provoked by art in such powerful and profound ways, and ultimately why art is such a subjective and personal experience: it simultaneously allows us to feel emotions we might not otherwise be able to describe and evokes our own personal association with those very feelings.”
This statement, too, hit home. A number of the paintings we select from our artists to show at The Willard Gallery have ignited a very personal response from me, inspired by my own history. In Jeanine Sobell Pastore’s Orange and Red Pear I can so clearly see my late sister painting her own fruit still lifes that she’d thoughtfully arrange on our kitchen counters. The Four Sheep who make up Jessie Mackay’s painting of the same name take me right back to our trip to the Scottish Highlands during lambing season. The light in Julia Jensen’s Restoration transports me to our annual summer trips to Vermont, watching the afternoon storm clouds move in and the light change across the valley below, while the relaxed curve of the dog in Stephen Dinsmore’s Dog in Yard reminds me of beautiful afternoons spent outside with just about every dog I’ve ever shared a home with. Lou Schellenberg’s aptly titled Manic Day is, for me, the day sixteen years ago that we first arrived in Maine from North Carolina, unpacked our U-Haul, and drove out to Kettle Cove in Cape Elizabeth just as the sun was setting to take in the wild beauty of our new home.
I could go on and on.
I’m always grateful when visitors to the gallery share their own stories about what they see in the paintings here. The same painting that reminds me of our summer trips to Vermont brought a recent visiting couple back to a trip they’d taken to Gleneagles in Scotland with their two daughters. Or the floral work by Ariane Luckey that a pair of lovely collectors purchased because it is the exact image of how they remember the flowers from their summer wedding celebration.
I love that art holds so much for us, and that our experience and engagement with it is uniquely our own. Whether our response to a work of art ignites a memory from our history or is simply more of a feeling that washes over us, the connection is so deeply personal. It is a privilege to be able to witness and share this experience with others on a daily basis.
Read More from the Gallery
