An Inventory of Traces: Roberto Jamora

Each gradient is a vignette of an experience or place in my Passing Memories series. I attempt to commit important events in my life to memory via painting. I mine color from memory and photos I’ve taken/have been tagged in on social media. Cold wax and oil paint are swiped across the canvas to conceal extraneous possibilities and to limit sentimentality. A thin trace of landscape is revealed. Skin tones, days at the beach, climbing a mountain with a lover, my parents’ backyard, a city sidewalk, the bayous in Louisiana where my ancestors once lived. Color triggers these recollections. Earlier in 2018, I had the privilege of receiving an Artist Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation to fund my socially engaged paintings. The title of my project, An Inventory of Traces, is inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism where Said writes “In many ways my study of Orientalism has been an attempt to inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals.” Thru abstraction, I wanted to celebrate the lives of immigrants. I met with immigrant artists and writers in NYC to learn about the traces the world has left upon them. Their stories inspired the color, composition, and literal traces on my paintings for which I am so grateful.