Excavation of Memory by Gregory Dalton (Original Painting)

Excavation of Memory brings fossil remains, mineral deposits, and tangled vegetation into a landscape beneath a burning orange sky. In the foreground, a creature’s exposed skeleton lies among curling growths and encrusted stone. Ribs echo stems, and folded leaves resemble fragments of bone.

The painting takes inspiration from Goethe’s “Urpflanze”, his idea of an underlying plant form expressed through many variations. Here, that interest in metamorphosis extends imaginatively across animal, plant, and mineral. The remains of one body become the setting for another form of growth. Death leaves a structure that the living world continues to occupy.

Oil paint gives weight to these exchanges. Pale bones emerge from deep shadows, while greens, ochres, and rust colored passages describe the dense accumulation around them. Fine marks pick out skeletal details and branching forms against broader areas of earth and sky.

The title treats memory as something held in the ground. What comes to light is fragmentary: a skeleton, an impression, a shape preserved after its original life has ended. These remains belong to the present landscape as fully as the trees standing above them.

Excavation of Memory was exhibited in 2007 at the Women’s Building in Los Angeles.
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