In this time of isolation, I have 2 paintings hanging on the wall in my home office that evoke warm memories of January 2020, the time before Covid19 began to change my experience of the world. The images were made by my grandchildren, Ava and Ethan Byrne, in response to a visit we made to the National Gallery of Victoria (Fig 1 & 2). We had seen the exhibition KAWS: Companionship in the age of loneliness.  The children loved everything about the experience of being in the gallery together. Seeing some familiar figures located among many new and wonderful ideas was a joyful and rich discovery of possibility. Upon returning home we spent time together in the studio making artwork. Without being prompted to do so both children made paintings that explored their memory of what it was like being in the gallery and encountering the exhibition with me. Ava, who was 10 years old at the time, made a painting that depicted the colour and light that she had found in the NGV, noting the significance of this building among others in the city. The footpath that led to the gallery was yellow, drawing the viewer into the wonder of this place. Ethan, who was 6 years old at the time, explored the feelings he had encountered in the joy of colour as he played with the materials and acknowledged his memory of the day with a simple and clear, ‘WOW’.

Rather than being painted from memory, there was a sense in which these works were painted for the purpose of memory, as they acknowledged the lived experience of being together with art and one another in January, 2020. As they hang in my home office now, in the midst of isolation, the images provoke my own memory and recollection of our shared experience of joy and remind me to imagine that one day it will be possible to do something like this again.