Red Amnesias is my original "hidden images" painting. It contains the childhood memory of a crayon house, replete with chimney, beneath concealing flames. It concerns the possible dissociation and reunification of implicit and explicit memory. Many of our choices and ideas may be formed by an interplay between the two, explicit memory being those events and experiences we consciously recall and implicit memory those perhaps acting without our knowledge. In other words, the activity generated by the "conscious" fire line may be influenced by the activity of the concealed/subconscious "house" without even realizing it.

One viewer "freaked out" upon viewing Red Amnesias for the first time, though he didn't know why. Initially, he didn't "see" the burning house in the painting, but upon further discussion, it turned out his family's house burned down during his childhood. Perhaps his was a twist on the type of "involuntary memory," the madeleine moments, explored by Marcel Proust. return to Gallery: Memory