Remembering | Original Painting

Here is a painting I began about a year ago, beginning with preparing the surface, a wooden brain which I cut out.

This is part of my new series about The Mind!

It took a while before I started painting on it, but that was a little less than a year ago. After I started, I had to set it aside for quite some time when I was traveling and then while rearranging my life due to my marriage falling apart, which I'm very thankful to God for beginning to restore my relationship and bring healing! I truly do love my husband.

At first I hesitated painting this person sitting inside of their own brain, because they looked rather somber and I thought to myself, “Why am I going to make a sad painting on this giant piece? I should be putting out more happiness or something like that”. 

I rolled with it because even though it wasn’t my ideal “look” it reflected well how I was feeling at the time. In fact the person doesn’t look too sad, rather, contemplative. 

They sit there thinking back into their memories.

I thought it was interesting that I had already sketched these two lovers dancing, as if they were lost in memory, almost invisible, as if they were hardly there anymore. I had drawn them in my sketchbook long before my marriage fell apart, it was almost like I knew that I was about to lose my husband. I really thought I had lost him for 6 months and it was quite terrible, completely brokenhearted. Even still, we are not living together, but working towards being able to again.

I like that the dancers in the heart look like they're moving, and that the heart is the spinning spirals around them.

This piece is about memory, as I am creating a series about The Mind! So far I have painted about Perspective and Imagination, and next I will paint about Reason.

Amazingly, there is not an overall teaching I am looking to bring across with memory, but this article is nonetheless packed with insightful and thought provoking info! 

Memory is indeed “who we are” and what connects us with others, without it we would be lost from one day to the next, not remembering how to so much as feed ourselves.

Some fun statistics:

Did you know?

• The human brain has the storage capacity equivalent to 2.5 Million Gigabytes of digital memory (that’s 300 years of watching non-stop TV)

• Memories start forming in the womb

• Your memories last longer the more emotional they are when created

• We have 1 Trillion neurons in our brain forming memory connections 

Memory, noun

1. To bring to mind or think again

2. To recollect

3. To keep in mind for consideration

4. To commemorate 

I Incorporated a lot of time symbols, clocks, an hourglass, the moon phases, and the pages of a book are like the pages of time. In the book we see the sunshine comes after the storm; darkest before dawn. 

I like how the tree's roots are digging down deep into the book. It's kind of like the pages of our life are what we are rooted in, growing from our experiences.  

My favorite part about this piece is the stair steps going up into the book, I love that part fit together!

Almost like the steps to the temple. 

Whenever stairs are seen in my paintings it symbolizes the stairway to the throne room of God, or the throne room of our hearts. 

I did not know that I was coming back to my faith when I started this piece, but I can't help but think that the book also looks like a Bible! In the following paintings you will see lots of Bibles because I love the Word of God! So perhaps it could be that the pages of these memories are founded in the guidance of the scripture, and that life's pages and the direction of our life is grounded in that way.

There's pathways here as well, which is a recurring symbol in my art that I may be gravitating away from for a while, but we shall see. This is the pathway of life, moving from one thing to the next.

At the beginning of this pathway, near the bottom of the brain in the brain stem, we see a spiral with a ladder in it. This is a symbol of spiraling in anxiety and depression, and having a way out! 

I had spent a lot of time in my life in that spiral and I always had this image of a ladder to escape with. 

The pathways have walkers on them, which is kind of like the movement of time, leading towards those steps to throne room. I got this idea from a photography book on composition talking about capturing things moving through time! 

One of the more memory-oriented pieces of this painting are the little pictures within the person's body. That is just to say that memory is stored throughout the entire body. Things that happen to us in our life are held within us, not just in our brain. Our neural pathways go throughout all our limbs, connecting to the spine which is just the continuation of the brainstem. 

Something I was learning while being injured, is that oftentimes injury follows trauma. Indeed, in the area of my body where I was injured, was also the area of my body where I had received the largest traumatic event of my life, large” because I was so young (I proceed to paint this memory there in the spot on the painting). 

I learned of this phenomenon from a highly trained massage therapist who mentioned that she often saw injury happen in the same place as a traumatic event. She and I were talking about how it could be the body's way of releasing those trapped memories from that area of the body. Although doesn’t an injury in and of itself add trauma to the muscles? I would so so! Either way a lot of attention gets drawn to those areas of injury and they get babied and loved on. 

Even though it's almost been 2 years since I tore both hamstrings, I still feel pain everyday and have had smaller recurring injuries flaring up.  

You can also see that this human is inside of the human brain, and yet another inside of their brain, and yet another.

We are the only ones inside of our head!

Sometimes we can get trapped there. So it's just another sort of metaphorical picture, I wonder what you gleam from this piece? Please let me know, I would love to hear it!

Memory is such a precious, precious gift that we have been given in this life!

It is what connects us and creates our identity. Literally everything that we do throughout our day would not be possible without memory, how to eat, drive, read, when to sleep and where we live.

Even instinct is generational memory.

I'm sure there's so many amazing facts I could bring to you on the subject of memory, but I have not necessarily studied it.

My main contemplations when creating this piece were just the ability to surrender my life to the greater plan. To understand that everything that has happened in the past, everything that's happening in the present, and everything that will happen in the future is all part of that plan. I need not worry about a thing! (and believe me, I used to worry a lot and have anxiety so bad I didn’t think it was possible to get rid of it).

In the last couple years I was getting quite obsessed with the ability to understand and predict my future. That was a very unhealthy place to live. Due to my mental state over the last 10 years I have really honed in on living in the present moment. Finally getting into a habitual pattern, with practice, of being able to ground myself in the present and experience it fully. Of course it remains a practice that I have to show up for EVERYDAY, no slacking!

I'm not always perfect, especially when there's more challenging things happening in life. 

Such as my injury, that was causing me to live in the past or the future (and helped me learn so much, I wasn’t as resilient then). The “almost divorce” was causing me to live in the past like crazy. I find it interesting that I was painting this piece at that particular time of my life. This piece was such a reminder of looking to the past. 

It's okay to be aware of our past and to even treasure those memories!

Memory is such a beautiful gift and treasure, something to be thankful for. However, we don't want to get lost in the past which is something that I would constantly struggle with, just wishing things could be the way that they were, little did I realize that I am on the way to things being so much better than they ever were. I'm looking forward to it and showing up for the journey that is required to get there.

So here's a reminder to live in the present moment, to treasure your good memories, to give your traumatic memories the space that they need to be able to be felt and released, and to look to the future with a trust and assurance that the pathway is laid out for you!

There's no avoiding what is to come, so just know that whatever is to come you will always have the strength to face it by the time it arrives. And remember to look out for all of the wonderful good things ahead as well, because life is full of blessings and there’s so much to be thankful for!

I give all of the credit, praise and love to the God I serve who has allowed me to show up to this life in the way that I am, with the strength that I do. Gratitude for all the lessons that I have learned!

I rely on God’s strength to face my days. In trusting God, I let go of the possible future, knowing that it is already taken care of for me! And for you too!