Nicole Charbonnet’s paintings, layered with overlapping images, textures, chalky washes and translucent paper and fabrics, evoke images and ideas that surface in one’s recollection of memories. This method of layering images is reminiscent of memories that have accumulated over time. Details are lost in some images while others remain visible. This is suggestive of the images in a memory that are sometime clear and other times unclear.

In “Dots, Loops, Stripes and Finches” Charbonnet incorporates images and textures associated with the past, continuing her interpretation of memories and encouraging the audience to build their own connections and associations to the imagery found in the paintings. Some figurative elements are inspired by other artists like Manet, Audubon and Pollock, while other images are stills from movie genres such as Film Noir and Westerns as well as other motion pictures such as O Brother, Where Art Thou, and The Wizard of Oz. For Charbonnet, these images serve as a metaphor for the phenomenon of recollection simulating the process of memory itself.