This piece began with a photograph submitted through my website — a moment captured in Venice and kept as a memory. I was drawn to the idea of taking something so personal, something that once existed only as an image on a camera roll, and giving it another life on paper.

Although I wasn’t there when the photograph was taken, spending time recreating the moment creates its own kind of connection. You begin to notice the atmosphere, the feeling within the image, and the story that made someone want to preserve it in the first place.

That is what I love about painting memories. The places may belong to someone else, but the process of recreating them allows me to become connected to a moment I never lived.

Altrove — meaning elsewhere — felt like the natural name for this piece. A word for that feeling of being transported somewhere beyond the present; somewhere held in a photograph, a memory, or a painting.

A moment that once belonged to a camera roll, now given a place to live beyond it.