HGLA #119 - All I see are your fingerprints…
Memory, paint and becoming what we once loved
I can’t get them off.
I scrub,
I scrape,
I burn.
But they don’t care.
Once, all I wanted.
Now,
Etched.
Branded.
Caustic.
Showing everyone
what once held me
down.
They look at me,
and I can’t understand
how they know.
But they do.
I hadn’t understood
what I was learning,
I would teach.
The cure you promised.
I bought,
and sought no more.
Until I realised
that it was you
I had become.
And everywhere I went,
it wasn’t me they saw,
but your fingerprints
on something
they thought
you owned.
It will hurt,
I know.
Change does.
But when I look in the mirror,
I can’t decide
Is what I find beautiful…
Me,
Or who you made me become?
Imprints
We find love in those who manage to dig through our walls and uncover our vulnerabilities. The ones who trigger something in us, and offer it a space to breathe.
Our interest piqued, we unfurl.
Peeling back the masks we’ve accumulated.
First our stories.
Then our clothes.
Then our lies.
Until they’re so deep that they see a side of us
even we aren’t willing to meet.
Shadows so deep that we fear they should never see the light.
Maybe they’ll be able to show them the love,
that we could not.
Some do.
Some don’t.
The trail of past lovers shows us who got where,
and how far we lasted.
But everyone, eventually, finds their mantle.
Every layer of rock, a new journey. Our accomplices finding ever more creative ways to excavate our unseen defects, and put them on the table for us both to see.
While we carve out our own tunnel,
inside of them.
But how much of ourselves do we give up so that they can fix what they find?
And what could their solution be, apart from them?
And ours, us…
No matter the pressure, there’s always their imprint.
And we only get to see it when we finally pull away.
Decalcomania
The act of pressing paint between two surfaces and pulling them apart to reveal what the contact creates.
Of all the ideas in contemporary art, this is one we all found a way to explore. Our hands smeared with mud or paint, pressing against the walls or paper around us to see what remained of us on their surface. Looking for how much of us was left after sharing that brief moment of connection.
Two surfaces meet with some connective medium between them; when they separate, both carry the effect of the other, changed forever. The surrealists saw it as a way to tap into the subconscious. They may be right.
In 1984, Andy Warhol made a series of large Rorschach paintings by pouring acrylic onto one half of a canvas and folding it to imprint the other side. He’d misunderstood the psychological test, thinking patients made the blots rather than interpreting them. Unlike much of his other work, there was no subject. No Marilyn. No soup can. Just paint finding purchase and pulling itself apart.
Cornelia Parker’s Poison and Antidote drawings use rattlesnake venom mixed with black ink on one side, anti-venom mixed with white correction fluid on the other, folded together into Rorschach blots. The kill and the cure in the same image. Each one containing sufficient venom to be dangerous. Like love, the beauty and threat are physically inseparable.
Doris Salcedo is less painterly in her approach to it. Instead, she uses the core similarity, pressure. Domestic furniture (chairs, wardrobes, beds) forced together, with their gaps filled with concrete, and joints pierced with steel. Two objects that once held separate lives fused into something neither was before. Objects remembering a utility no longer there. Concrete in the spaces where someone could once fit.
Memory
Contact between objects changes both surfaces.
Always.
You can’t press two things together and have either come away unmarked.
Memories are a beautiful thing.
Some stay.
Some go.
But they all leave a mark.
Especially those we can’t see.
These Imprint paintings are my little gift to the idea of memory.
To the idea of connection
Two aluminium plates. Mineral pigment and oil pressed between them. Pigments sourced from specific locations and objects that carry a historical and spiritual weight. Materials that are old, real, and remain connected to their historical position. Loaded with the weight of the ground they came from.
The plates are pressed together, the oil between, keeping them connected. Until they decide, they’re better apart. Each one pulling away as an imprint of the other.
Plates.
Pressure.
Separation.
One keeps what the other lets go.
One shows what the other can’t see.
Side by side,
we see the relationship after it ends.
Two surfaces that can never go back to what they were before they met.
Like every person who got close enough to leave a mark I didn’t ask for.
Every version of myself is someone I tried on,
because someone I loved wore it first.
Every mirror I look into, I see their fingerprints instead of my face.
I began this project as a way to remove my fingerprints from my paintings.
Now I look deeper,
I realize,
That’s the only thing I see.
Material as memory.
Compression as intimacy.
Separation as loss.
Two plates sitting side by side
Two objects that will never touch again
but will always carry the proof that once,
They did.
Final Words
Isn’t memory love wonderfully complex?
I’ll be sharing how the series progresses on socials and in here.
I hope you enjoy the final result.
And most importantly
To all the Mothers on here,
Happy Mother’s Day
You rock.
Love you loads,
-R
p.s. I know it’s late, but I was busy making my mom this, sound on
A genuinely lovely read.