When Memories Resurface in Color

Around the time I came to finish this painting, a memory resurfaced — a quiet, vivid recollection that had been tucked away for years. I remembered the bold blue window-like border, the red curve like flame, and the silvered moon. They seemed to appear on the canvas as if recalling for me the strength and vibrancy of the colors I’d seen in India.

I think of Howard Hodgkin here, who once said that his personal “somewhere else is India,” describing the country as a space both exotic and far removed from everyday life in England — a place that fueled his creative imagination. India’s dramatic skies, lush greenery, and bright, celebratory colors have had a huge impact on artists’ development, Hodgkins’ and my own alike. What resonates most with me in his work is not the literal depiction of place, but the emotional truth it conveys — how color, shape, and gesture can hold feeling rather than form.

Painting has a similar effect for me: sometimes it’s the touch of the brush, sometimes the mix of pigments, that brings a sensation from the past into the present. In this case, the colors themselves carried memory, guiding me through the shapes and textures as they echoed awe, warmth, and wonder I had felt long ago.

I keep returning to a morning years ago in Mumbai. We were at the Taj Mahal Palace, overlooking the Arabian Sea — breakfast in the lush courtyard garden — when I noticed him.

Howard Hodgkin.
One of my painting heroes.
Then, in his eighties, he sat in a wheelchair.

My gaze was met for a brief moment — a quiet recognition, a small exchange, but it stayed with me. I remained quiet. Caught somewhere between awe and surprise. But that brief moment felt like a blessing — a signifier, somehow, to step fully into the creative life I’d been circling.

Finishing this piece became more than completing a visual idea; it became an emotional bridge between memory, place, and the present self. There’s something sacred in this overlap, a reminder that art is not only what we see but what we feel, remember, and carry forward. In that space, painting feels less like a practice and more like a conversation — with the world, with memory, and with ourselves.