a project on memory loss 

Orvokki

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Memory Collection

2019 

Oil on Canvas 

85cm x 60cm

In Alzheimer’s disease the amygdala, partly in charge of emotional memories is affected later than the hippocampus. Therefore a person with Alzheimer's may not recall an event or person but will remember happenings exuding emotional value and how people made them feel. 

This piece was the first one I did for the collection. Based on a photograph of my grandmother, the painting combines personal symbolism with the general imagery that began to reappear in lots of my subsequent work within the memory collection. The deliberate incompleteness is used to convey the loss of the self to the disease, the contrast between the monochromatic greys (to depict time) and the vibrant flowers (the preservation of emotion) running across the eye area (fragmentation of the body and dissociation) is meant to illustrate the conservation of emotion. In addition I painted pansies to commemorate my grandmother as they were her favourite flowers as well as her middle name in Finnish, ‘Orvokki’. The flowers although in reality frail and short lived seems strong and resilient in the painting in comparison to its ambiguous surroundings, and the fading portrait.