New project 'Painting in the attic'

"In our daily life we proceed constantly through the coexistence of past and future. The essence of what we call spirit lies in the ability to move within the horizon of an open future and an unrepeatable past....the same activity of spirit finds expression as memory and recollection, which incorporates the art of the past along with our own artistic tradition.... tradition means transmission rather than conservation. This transmission does not imply that we leave things unchanged and merely conserve them. It means learning how to grasp and express the past anew" (Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful 1977)

Fifty years ago!

Fifty years ago I painted this  (an oil painting on hardboard) ...... I am not a painter, it was something I did at school  - now I work with found objects and in a sense this is a found object much like the slide transparencies that I have been working with! When my father died a few years ago the painting came back to me and has remained wrapped up in storage. It's a strange feeling unlocking things from the past.........

this is a detail

I am wondering where that girl who painted this has gone? I don't remember painting it at all! It must have been from an illustration in a magazine or book! Why the man in a boat? It's a mystery! So it's about things lost and forgotten rather than memory - a kind of mourning for lost youth maybe!
Is this my next project? - I have taken the first step and attempted to clean it up - the background has yellowed considerably during the years it hung in my parent's house (they were both smokers) - the photograph hides the yellowing which is interesting. I'm not sure where I'm going with it yet.
I have propped it up in the studio and will live with it there for a while and see what happens!