I spent a few afternoons with the lovely Jay Hur this past November in her Camberwell studio, where a gentle warmth floated through her softly-lit space despite the unforgiving winter winds spilling in through the cracks of old windows.

Jay sits at the nurtured, abundant intersection of memory and materiality, of the invisible and the tactile. In her space, gentle music folds itself into the air, the personality of each wood panel she paints on is as much a part of her creations as she is, and every item humbly breathes significance. There is no ceiling on Jay’s respect for the things she brings into her space; her mind, her emotions, her family, her friends, and her guides live on the walls around her in the shape of aging journal entries, postcards, quotes, quick sketches, and family photos curled by time at the edges. Her practice is deeply intuitive, allowing her to transform her intimate and personal experiences into visuals that allow enough space for the viewer to be unexpectedly greeted by their own.

I left her space and our conversations thinking about the ungraspable and yet deeply visceral nature of memory, and the ways in which our impossibly intricate internal worlds seep into our external realities. About how unspeakably beautiful this transfer becomes when we allow our pasts — the sum of why we are who where what how we are — a tangible if non-disruptive place in our preset. Jay has something to teach us all about this delicate temporal dance.