Memory, Light, and the Landscapes We Carry - La gazette #10
Orange Hills Aronui - 2024.
What if art wasn’t just something we collect, but something that remembers us?
Hello friend,
There is a particular house I see every day from my window—white walls, a flat blue roof, and the way the late light brushes the hills around it. At first glance, it’s an ordinary scene. But something about it stirs my heart and never fails to bring back a memory from my childhood.
Not a clear one. More like an echo.
Years ago, as a child in Argentina, I stayed in a beach house with my family and friends. That house had the same white-and-blue structure. We played on endless beaches, collected shells and treasures, and stumbled upon a huge shipwreck rising dark and strange on the shoreline. A photo from that time still lives with me: the sun in our eyes, a little sand mould in my hand, the horizon calling us forward into awe.
All these years later, that house in Alexandra—hundreds of miles from any sea—brought the wild ocean rushing back to me. It reminded me how memory doesn’t just live in the past. It arrives uninvited through colour, shape, and shadow.
That’s when Orange Hills began to take shape.
This painting is not a literal landscape—it’s a layered one. Built from hills and memory, from shadow light and salty breezes. It’s where the girl I once was gazes out, still in awe, still listening for the ocean behind the horizon.
And now, it’s waiting for someone else to see it—and feel something special. Not my memory, but their own. A quiet recognition. A moment of wonder, they forgot they were carrying.
If Orange Hills stirs something in you, perhaps it’s meant to.
Thank you for reading,
Warmly,
Marion V-W.