The Imprint of memory

These two small images spring from recollected moments on a month long journey through the remote Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. In both of them the imprint of memory becomes visible in the act of printing on paper.

Portal 2009

The first recalls a stop on the journey, one of many in which a traveller pauses, as though on the threshold of the future, to both reflect on and measure out the days of walking that lie ahead. From within the darkened space of this passage or gateway (the kind of place which often represents a state of transition in this pilgrimage territory), the eye moves away into the distance, across the arid wind swept hills towards the luminous mountain peak that reaches up into the deep blue above.

Prayer 2009

This nebulous blue expanse forms the starting point for the second print. Prayer flags rise through falling snow into a sky that, at this altitude, seems close enough to reach out and touch. The spectral image formed by these lines of bright coloured cloth, frayed by time and the constant winds as they stretch out across a star - flecked field, reveal something of the sensation experienced in this thin atmosphere, of the permeable boundary between one world and another.

Portal. Lithograph, 13x13cm, printed in an edition of 100 by the Curwen Press, 2009

Prayer. Lithograph, 15x20cm, printed in an edition of 50 by the Curwen Press, 2009 (commissioned  by the Curwen Press as part of their 50th anniversary portfolio)