Nostalgia is a powerful emotion that engages all of the senses. Thinking back to my teenage years, riding a borrowed horse bareback in summers that seemed endless, I can hear the music that we listened to on an old transistor radio (Billy Joel), smell the musky, fertile wetlands where we swam the horses, garnering more mosquito bites than seemed possible on our skinny, adolescent bodies, and feel the heat of the sun, scorching our unprotected skins. We’d laugh in a couple of weeks when the burned skin peeled off our shoulders in sheets. Those were different times and even the lack of information about all of the ways that we were harming ourselves seems appealing.
I’ve been thinking about those times a lot lately. Maybe it’s the relentlessly bad news in the papers, or maybe it’s the fact of another birthday, but looking back is becoming increasingly compelling and the paintings that I’m making feel both personal and universal at the same time. We’ve all got magical memories from our time before responsibility and a full awareness of the wider world.
For those of you who feel that pull from the past, there are still some spaces in my online workshop: The Painted History at the Winslow Art Center. As well, my workshop which explores painting a series: One Subject, Many Takes also has openings.
Both workshops lend themselves to introspection and the creation of meaningful, personal works. I hope you’ll check them out.
Happy painting!
Oh, Ingrid! You made me cry! Did we inhabit the same body?? The same peeling skin?? The same innocence?? It must be time for me to take your workshop…
What a wonderful post Ingrid. I have so been longing for the lightness of living of my youth. I will save this to reread often.
My memory is helping my friend muck stalls at her part time job; cool spring air and warm sunshine. Joan Jet on the radio xo