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Memory Lines by Alemsah Ozturk

@memorylines_ao

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I paint what remembering does to memory.
Layers. Erasure. Residue.
Memory Lines. By @alemsah

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Memory Lines, No. 74

I laid the red down in long horizontal pulls, one over another, until it felt like a pulse.

Underneath there was grey. I kept covering it, and it kept breaking through. A column of it on the left. Pale patches scattered across the middle, as if the surface had worn thin there.

A few thin dark lines run straight down through all of it. I left them standing.

That's how memory holds on. Not in what you add, but in what refuses to stay buried.

Layers. Erasure. Residue. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines, No. 75

I pulled orange across the surface until it caught the light like something burning slowly.

Then the dark came in. Bands of deep violet, dragged sideways, gathering on the right as if they had somewhere to be.

There's a vertical seam of brighter orange just left of centre. I painted over it more than once. It kept coming back.

Memory does this. The thing you cover is the thing that shows through.

Layers. Erasure. Residue. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines, No. 76

I kept pulling the red sideways until it stopped being a colour and became a heat.

Underneath, other things are still there. A few thin lines of olive green. A paler warmth breaking through near the top.

Memory works like this. It doesn't erase. It drags the same feeling across again and again, until what's left is texture.

At the bottom edge the paint thinned out and a few pale marks stayed on the surface. I left them.

Layers. Erasure. Residue. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines, No. 77

Some memories don't stay still.

They move sideways. Line after line, pulled across the surface until the shape underneath is almost gone.

Blue first. Then darker blue on top. Then something close to violet, dragged through all of it.

You can still feel what was there.
You just can't point to it anymore.

That's what time does. It doesn't erase a memory in one stroke.

It keeps passing over it.

Layers. Erasure. Residue. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines #78

Some memories don’t fade.

They bleed into everything around them.

Layers. Erasure. Residue. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines #80 & #79

Some memories disappear. Others change color.

You remember the feeling clearly.
The image, less so.

Every time you return to it, something shifts.
A detail disappears. Another becomes stronger. Something that may never have happened enters the picture.

Eventually, what remains isn’t the memory itself.

It’s the residue of remembering. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines, No. 82

It started almost empty.

Then I filled it with color, detail, noise, something that felt almost like a complete memory.

And then I covered most of it.

Not because I didn’t like what was underneath. I actually did.

But memory doesn’t preserve things because they were beautiful.

It fades them. Rewrites them. Buries some parts while strangely keeping others alive.

Pink survives. A little yellow survives. Traces of blue remain. Then new, darker lines appear on top, belonging to the present rather than the memory underneath.

The earlier versions are still there.

You just can’t fully reach them anymore.

Maybe that’s what I’ve started painting with Memory Lines.

Not memories themselves.

What remembering does to memory. by @memorylines_ao

Memory Lines, No. 81

The first version was probably nicer.

More beautiful. More balanced. Easier to look at.

But every time I looked at it, it felt incomplete.

So I painted over it.

I covered things I liked. Destroyed parts that worked. Added, erased, buried, revealed. Until the first painting was still there, but no longer completely accessible.

And maybe that is what memory actually is.

We think we remember the original.

But every time we return to a memory, we paint over it a little. Time changes it. Emotion changes it. What happened afterwards changes what happened before.

Eventually, what remains isn’t the memory itself.

It is the residue of remembering.

The lines that somehow survived everything we put on top of them.

Memory Lines.

This is where I begin. by @memorylines_ao