Artists

Marjolyn Van Der Hart

These paintings are from memory, imagination and suspended moments of my daily life.  Like windows in time each image attempts to search for the emotion associated with a particular time and place. So often a person has an image, a spark of a memory that is saturated with emotion. Many times there is an ambiguity to this image; a vagueness yet a crystal clear moment. Each painting is layered with several images. The process lends itself to creating a memory. I begin by creating an abstract image with several different types of paper; coloured tissue paper, handmade Japanese

papers, maps of different cities and pages from old romantic novels. This abstract piece represents my point of departure and context from which my memories are drawn from. My next step is layering images on top of this abstraction thereby obscuring the initial layer. These images relate to my world of living in a city, walking by the cafes, going for a bike ride, enjoying the day by being a “flaneur”. Parts of the initial abstraction come through and it is this memory of the first layer that informs the final story of the painting. The viewer experiences the narratives of the work, but by doing so becomes part of the process of reminiscing and recognizes that it is our memories that define who and what we are today.