CONJURED MEMORIES My current drawings are visual narratives that capture fragments and recreate moments of childhood memories and anxieties. They reveal intimate and sometimes awkward scenes that focus on the relationship and experience of growing up around my schizophrenic grandfather. These life size drawings are fueled by personal fears, confusions, anxieties, frustrations, and the vulnerabilities of childhood. Images of tumbling kittens, broken chairs, little girls, and distressed men strive to connect with each other while sharing an inner life at odds with reality. They explore an internal world unrestricted by logic or structure that conveys an underlying sense of anxiety and uncertainty. The tactility of charcoal and smoothness of acrylic gesso evokes and blurs forms to create solidity and space. Large white expanses suggest the transitive nature of memory juxtaposed against anxiously marked areas of visual and psychological interest. Aggressive marks, erasures, and veils of acrylic create realistic and abstract moments frozen in time. I intend for these frozen moments of childhood memories to intimately and physically engage the viewer with the work. These narratives are personal observations of the human condition that present an immediate and intimate, tangible expression of memory. - J. M. Culver                                                                                                             View Gallery