Landscapes, Memories, and Emotions
A Statement by Weiming Zhao
In my mind's eye, there always arise the snow-capped Altay Mountains in Northwestern China. The window view of the serene and majestic mountains from my childhood bedroom has long since vanished but the memory has stayed, and become more and more emotionally charged over the years. It is forever remembered as a landscape not only of epitomizing the pristine beauty of nature but also of becoming spiritually significant.
Our daily interaction with the living environment is not an emotion-free process. We tend to imbue our immediate surroundings with our emotions, and some significant life experiences of ours are kept in our memory as very much part of a landscape. Our living environments do not have to be visually spectacular to be a vessel of our emotions. As a matter of fact, the mere ordinary and mundane nature of our daily living environment tend to make the views of them even more memorable and even more emotionally charged. What could be more poignant as a visual reminder of our Manitoban summer than an ordinary plain-looking picnic table beside a crudely built fire-pit with a few skinned sticks for marshmallows?
In the late summer of 2003, I embarked upon an emotional journey by sketching and painting on different locations in Brandon, and since November that year, I have been pursuing this almost on a daily basis to the very last day of 2004, and have kept up on and off right through the year of 2005. The result is a collection of over six hundred sketches and paintings of Brandon. With each sketch or painting, I try to capture a fleeting moment of a view that has some personal significance or may mean something to other viewers. These sketched images are not meant to be photographic records of the actual views, but products of my personal perceptions bearing elements of the day, and tinged with personal emotions from past memories.
I have lived in Brandon for a total of 15 years now. Just like anyone who tends to lose fresh perception of the place after he has lived there too long, I also find myself getting too much habituated to what I see. Therefore, sketching also provides me with a sensory -rejuvenating opportunity. Never will I forget the emotional impact the very first sight of Brandon made on me when I arrived here fresh from China in June 1991. I remember walking down Lorne Avenue towards Brandon University the very next morning, breathing in the pine and lilac- scented air, marveling about all those beautiful houses and longing for the day when I could possibly call Brandon my home. However, I did not realize that it would take me almost five years to be able to see my wife and daughter again. Now as I start to sketch some of the views on Lorne Avenue, all the past memories are flashing back together with the emotions that engulfed me 14 years ago. Brandon has become so inseparable from that unforgettable life experience of mine.
I hope that all these sketched images, no matter how inadequate as a visual __expression, may arouse in you something that will enable you to look at your familiar city with a fresh point of view. I will be more than rewarded if some of these images do bring back to you particular memories of people and events from your life when you all called Brandon your home no matter how brief that moment might be.
I have uploaded over 500 of my sketches onto internet for you to view. Here is the website link http://www.weimingart.blogspot.com
