Her Imagination Tends to Run Wild

Her Imagination Tends To Run Wild

"Her Imagination Tends to Run Wild" - oil on cradled wood panel,  16 x 16 x 1.5 inches  (click on the image to purchase)

Continuing an exploration of Seaton's Fiddleheads: 
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Once when you hurt me I slept at a Red Roof Inn. I double-locked the door and tried to
watch talk shows to keep my mind off sounds like someone suffocating someone
in the next room. I thought I saw blood on the box spring and imagined needles and bulgy
veins, there’s something odd, I thought, about someone whose imagination runs this wild.

-FROM FIDDLEHEADS BY MAUREEN SEATON

Seaton's words are visceral and uncensored, off-putting.

She invites us to look at things we might not otherwise care to - especially those things that run through our own minds during challenging times.   

Visual art can be like poetry in that way, making us feel squirmy and uncomfortable because we feel stuff when we look at it.  I suppose that is part of our jobs as creatives - to invent a way to look at a thing that allows us to approach and sit with it for a moment.  Long enough for an aha, perhaps.  Or even just an oh.

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About the art - another piece created on top of an old one, using the underpainting colors to enhance the background and to cut through some of the foreground.  In using the poem as fodder for the art, I used harsh, edgy brush strokes and wedge edges for some of this piece, keeping the colors fairly stark and full of contrast.  Some soft blending, but mostly allowing the piece to fill with unrefined texture.  Especially important to resist perfecting this one, which feels Seaton's poem so deeply.

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It's the last week to enter the April Reader Giveaway!  This month we're talking about poems (or lyrics or quotes) that hit you in a visceral way.  What's your favorite?  Leave a comment to enter - one lucky reader will receive a piece of original art FREE, just for participating.  Hooray!