Kristyna Ghailani

I was eager to work on something that held a deep personal meaning for me, something I could wholeheartedly invest myself in. I also felt the urge to get back to painting on canvases and to experiment with new mediums I had never used before, like heavy structure gel, gloss medium, and varnish.

Distant Memories is a series of three paintings inspired by my family’s trip to the Czech Republic to visit my grandparents, specifically during the summer of 2023. The framework around the memory is also inspired by significant places I have visited. One of the paintings features my sister playing in the river with our dog. This scene is seen through Hercules Cave in Morocco, a place I often visited as a kid when I spent time with the other side of my family. The other two paintings show views through windows from Orlik’s Castle, which I visited during my summer holiday in 2023.

My aim with the Distant Memories series is to evoke a sense of distance and stir the feeling of being far from the event depicted in the centre of the painting. It’s like gazing into a memory that is now far in the past—a ‘distant memory’. I hope that these paintings will not only evoke my own memories but also resonate with the audience, reminding them of their own ‘distant memories’.

Each painting in the Distant Memories series is a unique blend of techniques and materials. I mixed the acrylics with gloss medium and applied layers of gloss varnish to the painted memory, creating a vibrant and textured surface. To enhance the illusion of gazing through a cave or window and into the memory, I mixed heavy structure gel with my black and black-red acrylics and applied it around the memory with pallet knives. This technique adds depth and a sense of physicality to the paintings, inviting the viewer to step into the scene.