Radiant Recall

 

Radiant Recall 

Merry go round

In the Garden

Sunshine Corner

Up on the Roof

All the Way to China

Mom's Prom

By Tom Wachunas 

“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.” -Barbara Kingsolver

“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”  - Antonio Porchia

“A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.”  - Edward de Bono

“…The intention is not to fix or memorialize time, but instead excavate a specific memory, perpetuating movement and inviting participation. The work depicts the slippery efforts of the mind's eye to pause and preserve disintegrating memories..." – David King 

EXHIBIT: Time Travel – Paintings by David King, at Vital Arts Gallery /  324 Cleveland Ave NW, downtown Canton, Ohio / Through June 12, 2021 – ONLY A FEW DAYS REMAINING !!  Gallery hours are Wednesday 4:00 to 8:00 p.m., Thursday-Saturday, 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

   I often marvel at the magic of human memory. Our ability to remember the people, places and things we experienced in the past is a powerful and, make no mistake, mystical one.

   To recall and recollect feelings, states of mind, and even physical sensations, is a treasure. And yet it’s also a treasure confounding in its fragility and transience. Over time, even our fondest memories accumulate so abundantly into the mass that is our being that they can be crushed under their own weight, like gemstones pulverized and dispersed into glistening dust.

   So if a memory, especially an old one, can be said to be a magic show, it is nonetheless a fleeting encounter. Such memories might require a grand sleight of mind and heart to activate and preserve them. And interestingly enough, it is often the very potent work of a skilled painter – a prestidigitator in his or her own right - that can do the trick.   

  For this eye-popping exhibit of oil-and-acrylic works on canvas, Cleveland Heights artist David King was inspired by family movies and photos some 50 to 60 years old. While his imagery is narrative in a general sort of way, it isn’t a stylistically meticulous, literal realism at work here. Think of these loose, painterly remembrances more as a lateral poeticizing. Memory in motion. Yes, there’s something of a nostalgic spirit about them - a dreamlike if not surreal charm - but never one that gets too mired in gushy sentimentality.

   What makes the sense of spontaneity and freshness in these works all the more present is King’s intensely charged palette. There’s a not-in-Kansas-anymore quirkiness in the way his hot fluorescent colors irradiate the scenes with a dynamic energy, transforming so many thens into utterly new nows.

   I could be wrong, but I’m thinking that for David King, looking at all those old movie reels or photos must surely have been an incipient experience. A personal epiphany. So he celebrated it by wielding his paintbrush like a magic wand.