The Forest
These paintings of forest cover earlier paintings of family and friends made over the last ten years. Included are paintings of memory, and paintings showing memory disappearing into forest.
Paintings made over the last ten years, most never shown publicly, would be covered first in white paint until there was nothing left, then I would see what came next.
I had a night, sometimes two to work on them before the paint dried again and the window closed. Many times while painting over someone, some earlier memory, I’ll feel connected with a person I’ve lost and feel that all over again. The point is to allow that in.
By taking something I cared about—my work of the last decade, and piece by piece giving it away to some unknown annihilation I was reenacting a ritual. Inhabiting a process of disappearance and seeing where it took me. Into the unknown. Into the forest.
© Will Ambrose