Tim Eitel initiates an exchange between recollection and painting. The work on his pictures, he says, is ' a conversation about reality and memory' in which he engages the canvas. In the course of this dialogue, Eitel reflects on personal experiences, creating a standalone figural-abstract reality that needs to be internally consistent-- the canvas has a strong will of its own. That makes the scenes depicted in his paintings analogues or afterimages of a situation rather than renditions of it. They are characterized by a certain openness that enables the beholders to inject their own recollections into the pictorial space as well. The dialogue between canvas and artist thus gives way to a colloquy between audience and finished work. Not by coincidence, many of the paintings by Eitel gathered in this catalog show people in museums: these scenes facilitate the leap into the pictorial space. The beholders have experienced a situation like the one shown in the pictures in the past or are
