Memory, the Reason for Making

I observe that as adults many of us hold our childhood dear in our remembrance of the past. Barbara Hepworth once said that perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to see that. As a practising artist, I recognize her saying, that so much of my writing, making, and thinking are related to those inexplicable moments felt in the memory of
my life as a roaming free child.

My connection with the world is often reminded through muddy walks, alone with the trees in the woodlands, listening to birds and winds passing through gaps among the trees, and lots of smells unique to a life in the country, like ones from summer meadows, yellow honeysuckles, tomato vines, brown leaves composting on the autumn rainy paths, soils turned after a hearty harvest, and lots and lots of hays stacking high in the sunny expansive fields.
 
In The Arts and Human Development, the writer Howard Gardner points out that in painting, literature and music a normal child of seven or eight is, in many respects, already able to appreciate artistically as well as most adults. The reason of that, according to Gardener, is that the child learns to perceive the world through its own body. 

This, according to Gardner, is also how artists perceive. The natural sense of oneness between the body and the outside world is ‘another way of cutting up the universe,’ an alternative to the objective, scientific way, and it is the artist’s way as well as the young child’s. The body connection with the world is not merely physical. Qualities such as hollowness, balance, solidity, openness and
closeness have, or develop, emotional and moral connotations.

I like Gardner’s explanation of exploring the world through the body. Though born from an oriental culture where overtly displaying emotions in public is not the norm, I have always drawn to touch such as the physical way of hugging someone who we love and miss. That physical warmth and touch, for me, can surpass many thousands of words spoken. The same applies to my creative
practice. Painting has always been a second choice for me, in comparison to making three dimensional things, be it sculpture, installation, or simply a pop up object. Somehow being able to touch and feel the things that I am making always gives me enormous amount of calm, reassurance, and solidity.
 
One friend of mine said that remembering is a creative process and I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think the way we navigate around and experience the world has always so much to do with remembering. The remembering feels like the invisible threads underneath an undisturbed forest.
As the threads of fungus are connected to support the growth and thriving of a forest, the remembering offers us a safe haven of comfort and warmth as we trek through the journey of life. As an aspiring artist, I think partly what I want to make is just that, that remembering, that intricate web like texture called our dear memory.