I posted this on c.l.r but no one could help me:

Maybe I misunderstand this.
My VisproRexx program (MAMERun) may load several hundred GIF images
in the image editor form. Whenever it loads an image, memory
usage grows to correspond to the size of the image and is not
released, even when a new image is loaded. Whatever memory
that is used is returned back to the pool once the program is closed,
but this behavior seems strange to me. There is no explicit "unload"
for the image editor and so I assumed that it can only load 1 image
at a time and thus would expect it to release any previous image.

This can also be demonstrated in the VPR Paint example program. To
expedite things, open several large images after on another and watch
your favorite memory usage monitor. I first discovered this with
smartbar's monitor and confirmed it with Theseus.

Anybody have a common experience or can explain this to me?