An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience by Mark Sheeky

G640A An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience
Oil on panel
Aug to Nov 2013, Size 420x318 mm

Detail from An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience by Mark Sheeky Detail from An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience by Mark Sheeky Detail from An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience by Mark Sheeky

About this painting
A painting about social experiences. To experience something alone is no different from not experiencing it at all - the two outcomes would be identical in the world, only different in the memory of the witness, but what is memory but an intangible, uncertain and corruptible sense-record?

It is only by sharing an experience that it becomes real, this is almost a macroscopic realisation of a quantum-like truth; even atoms need recognition to exist at all.

These days, solitary people share experiences with their technology, their mobile-device-friend who's camera records their moments. The memory of telephones is more reliable than ours, so perhaps they are superior beings.

The mountain stares alone at the wondrous sight, but its reflection shows nothing. Only the ghostly figure and boatman, from the famous Arnold Böcklin painting Isle of the Dead, sees the solitary witness. Perhaps the ghost is the soul, emotion, the fragment of reality gazing is hopelessness at the lonely mountain.

An Experience That Isn't Shared Is The Same As No Experience (Original)
Private collection.