April Deacon challenges our ideas of memory and history with her series of works on found surfaces featured here.  She takes old photographs and applies gouache in vibrant colors to create art. 

I find that these pieces almost mock the seriousness of time, proving that what we thought had passed can actually continue on in unexpected ways.

Deacon’s Artistic Statement:

I collect discarded memories, then reinvent them.

Photographs came first, being the most obvious purveyors of human memory.  These representatives of forgotten memories are quite common in antique stores.  I have boxes of them now and sorting through them I am flooded with emotions.  I am particularly sensitive to the portraits.  Antique photographs reflect the mortality of people and things.  They capture the inevitability and reliability of deterioration that I respect, but that results in an unnatural desire to resurrect them, that I cannot suppress.  The sadness in the realization that these people have been forgotten on some level and the symbols of their memories discarded to be found by me, a stranger, proves overwhelming.  Each image contains secrets and truths.  Influenced by the mood of the photograph, I choose a color palette.  In addition to color, I use shape and pattern, which are informed by the natural contours and existing value contrasts, to transform each subject.  The mosaic-like effect creates a lovely web of contour lines, which in turn implies movement. 

Source: The Jealous Curator