This piece evokes memories of walking through landscapes with rolling hills (California, my current home) and rocky outcroppings (the memories of my childhood spent in South Africa). Both landscapes share the presence of wild grasses. Long grasses, short shrubby grasses, grasses of many kinds. The dried grasses sharing tones of shifting shades of gold contrasted against the soils, red as well as brown. I can hear the sound that the grasses make when the wind rushes through them: sometimes with force and other times lazily.
The sunlight that this painting conjures up is from a late autumn or early winter sun, soft and light, warming the body. I hear voices next to me in some of the memories, and in others I am alone with the landscape. Some of these moments can be traced directly back to specific memories of places and people, and some of them enter the realm of the universal and the dream-world.
While the creation story of this piece is personal to me, I know that running parallel to this narrative is a universal one. We all have memories that are attached to landscapes, and we can all share in that connection. We can all lose ourselves in the realm where we are simply sentient beings, moving through a natural space, experiencing the sunlight filtering through the wild grasses, listening to the sounds around us. Marking that moment in time.
We are all walking around with our memories embedded within us. These memories make trusty friends and loyal companions.
May this painting bring your own good memories to the surface.
With kindness,
Marilet
