A Reflective Statement

This work explores memory through recollections of time spent at my grandparents’ chamferboard home in Ipswich, Queensland: memories blurred by time and complicated by trauma. In this work, remembering becomes an act of gathering fragments and stitching them into a new fabric of memory, reclaiming what is both remembered and forgotten.

This large oil on board is a full-length double portrait staged in a shallow, ambiguous pictorial space. My grandmother and I stand on a strip of green lawn, smiling and knitting small red garments, a cauliflower with exposed roots at our feet. She wears a 1940’s style butter-yellow dress and navy cardigan; I wear a bottle-green dress outlined in white with paper-doll style tabs. A single red yarn links our knitting, loops our bodies, attaches to a toy elephant pegged to a Hills Hoist, then dangles toward a blue taped outline of a child jumping to catch it. In the background, mango branches cut across a vivid blue sky, and the Queenslander facade resolves in pastel geometric blocks, its roof lightly traced with a crenellated castle line.

Images Left to Right: Family Photograph, c. 1940s, private collection; Rachel Wolfe, Study (Self with Grandmother) and Study (Single Line Drawing), graphite on paper, 2025, each 42 x 29.7cm.

The work explores the precariousness of memory: layered, partial, and shaped as much by forgetting as by remembering. Through an act of adjacency, I step into family history, placing myself beside my young grandmother, piecing together remembered and invented elements: knitting, learned at her side, embodies patience and generational continuity, while the red yarn threads family, time, and place as a metaphor for repair; the elephant, associated with long memory and matriarchal care, suggests elders guiding the young; the cauliflower with exposed roots grounds family history and nods to my grandfather; the paper-doll dress hints that selves and memories are cut out and re-dressed over time; the taped child repairs stray pieces of early memories into a single figure; and the faint castle line turns an ordinary roof into a child’s fortress, alluding to memory mythologising the past.

I do not aim to restore the past through realism, but to honour and reclaim it through a layered process that mirrors how memory functions. Rendered detail, blocks of colour and crisp cut-in edges mark flashes of clarity, while geometric taped outlines suggest constructed memory.  Loose acrylic underpainting remains visible with seams and unpainted edges kept as markers of forgetting. Repainting and revision left traces, echoing how memory is reshaped over time.

Julie Dowling’s family portraits ignited my interest in intergenerational storytelling. Dexter Dalwood’s collaged interiors informed my composition, and his dissonant colour encouraged me to shape a palette that conveys emotion rather than realism. Helen Johnson’s layered figure/ground strategies helped me find a language for fragmentation and William V. Dunning’s writing on ambiguous pictorial space offered a conceptual framework. 

Reflecting on the process, finding a clearer visual language felt like a breakthrough, particularly the loose underpainting with negative cut-ins, which I will continue to explore. I enjoyed rendering the detail, though painting my own face tested my confidence.

Ultimately, this project is both personal and shared: a way to reimagine and reclaim fragments through a painting process that materialises remembering and forgetting, renewing a sense of belonging in the present.

Rachel Wolfe

31 October 2025

References

·       Dowling, Julie. Self-portrait: In Our Country. 2002. Synthetic polymer paint, oil, and red ochre on canvas, 120 x 100 cm. National Gallery of Australia. Accessed September 6, 2025. https://nga.gov.au/on-demand/julie-dowling-self-portrait-in-our-country/.

·       Dunning, William V. Changing Images of Pictorial Space: A History of Spatial Illusion in Painting. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991.

·       Johnson, Helen. “Agency.” Helen Johnson. 2019. Accessed September 30, 2025. https://www.helenjohnson.net/exhibitions/agency.

·       Lunn, Felicity, and Michael Archer. Dexter Dalwood. London: Tate Publishing, 2010. Accessed September 6, 2025. https://shop.tate.org.uk/dexter-dalwood/9665.html.

·       PhilPapers. “Paul Ricœur: Memory, History, Forgetting.” Accessed September 6, 2025. https://philpapers.org/rec/RICMHF.

·       Tate. “Helen Johnson – ‘Humour Is a Powerful Tool for an Artist’ | Tate.” YouTube video, n.d. Accessed September 30, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XvgXRnk_HM.

Threads of Memory, a Reflective Statement was originally submitted as part of my Bachelor of Fine Arts studies at the University of Tasmania. Shared here to document my creative development and artistic practice.

Rachel Wolfe is an emerging artist based in Hobart, Tasmania, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania. With a diverse and evolving practice, Rachel explores various mediums and techniques to create captivating and thought-provoking works of art. To explore Rachel's latest projects and artistic journey, visit her website www.rachelwolfe.com.au or follow her on social media.