When my family moved from England with my family to America at first I was very excited . After a year I became homesick and began having dreams that I was back in England. In the dream would be a passenger in a car driving through fields. Hedge rows opening closing revealing the landscape as it stretched toward God I thought. The car would be driving at dusk and at night in these dreams. Forms would appear and disappear in the warm, yellow eye of the car head lights. There was a sadness that would come over me when I awoke and realized that I was not in England but only briefly transported and was now back across the sea.
When I returned to England as an adult I walked from my house to my old primary school. All the smells came back to me from the bushes that lined the walk. A smell that was no where else on the planet it seemed. My body shrank to three feet tall again. I could also hear for a moment the sound of children's voices echo through time on the courtyard of the school where we used to play, and our playing seemed important. I remembered children dotting the old Colchester park like sheep on the hillside. Where did we all go? The forest that lined the walk to Matthew and Stefan's was now a housing development. The little nook that I brought a pan to if I was going to run away from home was now no secret place but exposed to concrete and houses.
I am realizing that painting is like a time machine. We can travel to the past and future and connect to those memories and the feelings.
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