My project is meant to represent the impact of childhood amnesia. For most of us, certain childhood memories are fuzzy (which is represented by the white hues depicted over the painting in my project). In fact, of the various resources I scoured on childhood amnesia and memory, they all seem to concur: events that take place in the first few years of your life are very, very rarely stored in our memory. While our parents and relatives may remember our first words, or even our first day of preschool, we are not likely to recall these events. As we get older, childhood memories get progressively more fuzzy, as we begin to build new memories in subsequent life experiences.

However, beyond a normal level of childhood amnesia that we all experience in our lifetime, traumatic events can also cause amnesia and taint even positive childhood memories and experiences, or on the other hand, cause one to only remember the positive childhood experiences. Some children are unable to recall specific occurrences of abuse during childhood, but these suppressed memories may re-surface during adulthood; other times, childhood trauma can taint a person’s entire recollection of their childhood.

In my painting, which is comprised of both an oil painting plus digital edits, I wanted to indicate a happy, typical childhood memory and distort it to represent both a normal degree of childhood amnesia, plus chunks of memory that may be erased or tainted by trauma (which is indicated by the harsh black rectangles with black smudges surrounding them). In my last project, focused around sleep, I utilized the method of digitally transforming a 2D traditional painting. I really enjoyed the outcome and process of that piece, and opted to do something similar for this project. I utilized Microsoft Paint 3D for this project, to edit an existing oil painting.

Sources:

https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2004/12/bauer

https://www.healthline.com/health/why-cant-i-remember-my-childhood

https://istss.org/public-resources/trauma-basics/what-is-childhood-trauma/remembering-childhood-trauma#:~:text=But%20only%20in%20the%20past,are%20unlikely%20to%20be%20remembered.