Remembrance, The Lasting Perfume

Memories of a bloom 2 watercolor on Yupo 5x7"

Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume.  ~Jean de Boufflers

I saw these stalks with dried out flower pods, petals, leaves still attached while on a walk couple of years ago in Colorado.  This painting is the second in the series capturing the memories of that cold crisp morning. I used the same techniques in this painting as in the earlier one.  My plan is to  change or add  one color to each of the painting to give each painting its uniqueness as well as making it a part of the series. They are small paintings but take time to complete since each layer has to dry completely before I lay the next one. You may check out the first painting here. 

Talking about memories I recently came across an article highlighting the fact that memories are not fixed but flexible and can be manipulated very easily: "....memories are surprisingly vulnerable and highly dynamic. In the lab they can be flicked on or dimmed with a simple dose of drugs. “For a hundred years, people thought memory was wired into the brain,” Nader says. “Instead, we find it can be rewired—you can add false information to it, make it stronger, make it weaker, and possibly even make it disappear.” Nader and Brunet are not the only ones to make this observation. One of the scietinsts, Nader further wonders:  "What actually happens when we recall the past? Does the very act of remembering undo what happened? Does a memory have to go through the consolidation process again? " 

A little further the article points out a fascinating point: "While neuroscientists were skeptical of Nader’s findings, cognitive scientists were immediately fascinated that memory might be constantly revamped. It certainly seemed to explain their observations: The home run you hit in Little League? Your first kiss? As you replay these memories, you reawaken and reconsolidate them hundreds of times. Each time, you replace the original with a slightly modified version. Eventually you are not really remembering what happened; you are remembering your story about it. “Reconsolidation suggests that when you use a memory, the one you had originally is no longer valid or maybe no longer accessible,” LeDoux says. “If you take it to the extreme, your memory is only as good as your last memory. The fewer times you use it, the more pristine it is. The more you use it, the more you change it.” We’ve all had the experience of repeating a dramatic story so many times that the events seem dead, as if they came from a novel rather than real life."

So I wonder, how much do I change my memory when I sketch and paint things I encounter?