Artist and creative professional Vincent Brien presents a profound reflection on how childhood experiences shape our adult understanding of the world around us. His contemplative piece examines the unique way children perceive life before self-awareness filters their raw sensory experiences.
Brien describes childhood as a period of "childlike eclecticism," when individuals welcome life's manifestations with wide-open senses. During this formative time, he notes, family, friends, and the surrounding community provide protection and guidance. However, it is in solitary moments within secret, personal spaces—whether a bare cabin, hospitable shrubs, or a neglected corner of the family home—that children truly open themselves to both their inner world and the external environment that embraces them.
These private sanctuaries become theaters of discovery where children spend hours observing tiny insects and their ways of life. Brien emphasizes how natural elements like the breeze, rays of sunshine, and passing clouds suggest the existence of dormant forces in the world. In these intimate settings, he argues, the theater of future possibilities unfolds on a smaller, more comprehensible scale for young minds.
The artist describes how each moment spent contemplating life's spectacle leaves permanent marks on future encounters and experiences. As evening approaches, familiar sensory details—the sharp, acidic scent of trampled grass or the cold touch of old paving stones—combine with distant voices to create lasting impressions. These daily experiences accumulate, each pushing earlier sensations deeper into memory, where they are welcomed and never released.
Brien explores the eventual reconnection between the adult self and childhood memories, describing how echoes of early experiences resurface years later. Like a massive wave, he explains, buried memories flood back unchecked when triggered by specific stimuli. The warm wind of a distant land, the scent of an unknown city, the melody of a passing voice, or even a photograph can mark these simultaneously vague and acute moments with the powerful impression of having previously lived them.
Vincent Brien's work and artistic portfolio can be viewed at his online gallery at https://vincentbrien.carbonmade.com/ and through his Instagram account @vincent.brien, where he continues to explore themes of memory, perception, and the enduring influence of childhood experiences on adult consciousness.
