• Looking at a summer landscape on a cloudy day, seeing cows grazing and trees clumped in fields, after having looked at Constable oil sketches of the same subject, I was immediately struck by the way the landscape looked like the sketches.
• It is perhaps the case that each object or scene we recognise is an accretion or compound of numerous perceptions. When we recognise an image of a cow it is because we reference the accumulated experience of all the cows we've seen, likewise with a picture of a beach .
• It is perhaps the case that the most recent or frequent visual experience comes to predominate in our memory. So for example, if we spend a lot of time looking at Constable's images of summer landscapes of the British countryside then they come to 'stand in' for such a scene; they dominate the memory image. So when we come to look at the scene, say through a train window, we recognise objects (trees, clouds, cows) while referring to the most recent or frequent impressions.
• In a sense, the 'real' scene is just as much a representation as the oil sketch. Each is an image in which recognise particular entities, drawing on memories accrued over countless perceptual moments. The most recent or frequent experience determines the 'shape' of the memory that is brought into play when recognition occurs. I recognise the 'real' landscape at the same time as the Constable landscape - one is overlayed on the other.
