THE GAZE TRAVELS THROUGH MEMORY – Anne Ovaska

When painting, it’s fascinating how thoughts bounce from one color and mood to another and what form they ultimately take in the painting. How a painting, after going through many different stages and sensory perceptions, finally settles into view.

I aim to capture movement, journey, and time in my paintings. I examine perception and seeing. It’s interesting how the gaze travels within the image and the mind clings to a color, line, or point, forming memories, layers of time, scents, and moods. An organic shape always refers to something. The gaze travels through memory. Observations intertwine, and everything is possible. The step into the murky waters of memory is short.

A painting is like a web woven from vibrations that alternately conceals and reveals. The gaze circles and digs up memories from dreams and reality.

Water as a subject in painting is a source, a reflection, and a surface that mirrors its surroundings. Nature, interrupted by reflection, shimmers on the water’s surface and opens new vistas for the viewer. A reflection is not an image; reflections just happen and condense into fragmented moments of memory. Often, the most interesting part of a painting is what is not visible, what can only be sensed. A painting lives its own life in the viewer’s gaze.

Translated with Copilot