Each painting emerges from recollections of places seen and imagined, music and conversations heard, emotions, expectations and anticipation — all of it gets transferred onto the surface through color and structure. Painting is pulling stuff out of mental storage and adding to the supply at the same time.

REW/FF: New Work by Emilia Dubicki
30 October – 3 December ’13

Able Fine Art NY
511 West 25th Street
Suite 607
New York, N.Y. 10001
212.675.3057

Memory’s emerged as both motivator and strategy in recent discussions here on Tilted Arc. Take, for example, Paul Behnke, in his wonderful Backstory piece published here last Thursday:

“…so much of painting is this. It’s a recalling and churning up of experience and memory that can never be planned, relied on, or trusted. But my process requires trust. I begin with random marks and colors that over time coalesce… . Little by little, the anxiety lessens as…decisions are made and options grow fewer until a painting is made.”

Or Stuart Shils, on observation and memory–and about how his monotypes use both to impact upon process:

“…the monotype has posed very serious questions about painting, about how to make a painting or what the painting is supposed to be. Not the way I was making paintings ten years ago, sitting in front of something and responding to it, but working away from the direct contact; whether it be through drawing, through memory, through some kind of interpretative reference to a photograph.

“… The real question is not what do we see…but how do we see–and what is our responsibility to it in terms of what we make…”

And then there’s Emilia Dubicki, who talks about memory, how it can “rewind and fast forward,” and how this helps inform her work. So much so, that she calls her current show at Able Fine Art NY, REW/FF. (Extended thru 12/3, so hurry!)

Here’s Emilia Dubicki, in email this morning:

“Each painting emerges from recollections of places seen and imagined, music and conversations heard, emotions, expectations and anticipation — all of it gets transferred onto the surface through color and structure. Painting is pulling stuff out of mental storage and adding to the supply at the same time.”

—R.B.

Editor’s Recs:

Read more of our thread on memory as theme and strategy in conversations and Backstories with painters Paul Behnke, Emilia Dubicki, Alan Feltus and Stuart Shils; poets Carl Phillips and Katie Ford; and photographers Jessica Auer and Stan Strembicki, here.