Eighty years is time enough to accumulate (and forget) memories that not even state-of-the-art HD could support. The brain of Venezuelan artist Jacobo Borges, for example, was overflowing with fragmented memories of landscape and the feelings triggered by those vast expanses of nature. Borges decided to take these half-coherent memories colored by the passage of time and depict them in a series of impressionistic digital paintings called Paisajes de la Memoria.The end result is some 14 large-scale pieces with titles such as Junto a… (Along with), Otoño (Fall), Bien lejos de… (Very Far From…), Invierno (Winter), Al lado de… Primavera (Side by side with… Spring), Después de… Verano (After… Summer)."These are pictures of many landscapes, fragments and feelings that I paint, erase, and go back to painting," says Borges. “I dig them out from memory where the process of what was erased is preserved. I look for simultaneity of landscapes, crossing the timeline and standing at the very same spot, but in different moments between what I lived and what I dreamt.”Borges, a well-established Latin American artist whose style is typically described as neo-figurative, "paints" these images in his computer with the post-modern technique duborcom, essentially painting on a touch screen. The result is paintings that look organic when seen from a distance, filled with almost endless details and colors, with a style that appears to lie somewhere between Monet’s barely distinguishable impressionistic landscapes and the sinewy, abstract forms of Jackson Pollock.We can’t help but draw parallels between Borges and another heavyweight figurative painter getting on in years but still eager to experiment with digital media and touchscreen technology: David Hockney. The acclaimed British painter has been making quite a splash (and causing quite a stir) with his iPad paintings, and has recently opened an exhibition of these tablet-based works at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art called “Me Draw On iPad”.
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