Me and the Caterpillar V

Me and the Caterpillar V is a work from the Me and the Caterpillar series, which takes old photographs preserved in the artist’s family album as its point of departure, exploring the structure of painting and the distance between memory and image. The photographs depict events and people that certainly once existed, yet they are scarcely connected to the artist’s own memory. Images that “remain as photographs but lack a tangible sense as memory” are also referenced in this work.

In this piece, the contrast between the “figure” placed at the center of the composition and the frame-like “ground” surrounding it, painted with acrylic gouache, is once again employed. The fabric support is dyed by the artist’s own hand and treated with dosa to fix the drawing materials. The forms are rendered using transparent watercolor and triangular chalk, allowing the provisional and sketch-like qualities of the lines to remain visible on the surface.

In V, characteristics of the drawn lines used in the early stages of the series are reintroduced, quietly reconnecting the methods that have been repeatedly employed throughout the series. The forms extracted from photographs do not explain specific narratives or emotions, but instead barely coalesce as traces of an uncertain presence drifting between memory and record.

Positioned in the latter half of the series as it moves toward completion, Me and the Caterpillar V is a work that retraces the accumulated structure while quietly examining how the distance between the “self” and the “image” is maintained and allowed to fluctuate.