The Conversation We Never Had

The Conversation We Never Had

"The Conversation We Never Had" - oil on cradled wood panel, 18 x 18 x 1.5 inches.  Ready to hang. (click on the image to purchase)

If you've ever replayed a conversation over and over in your head and thought about all of the possible ways it could have gone, then you've experienced jouska. "It's this idea of rehearsing or playing out this hypothetical conversation. And in a sense, getting a feeling of control, or ownership over something that of course, is beyond our control,"  - CHRISTOPHER LELE 

Oh-ho!  Yes indeed.  I am the queen of conversational re-play.  And Lele's words hit me right in the gut - it is all about trying to control what I cannot.

​Conversations are the ultimate improvisation - they are in the moment, ad-lib, free-wheeling spontaneity with all the risks of embarrassment, regret, rejection and self-judgment that goes along with improvising.  But they are also, then, the opportunity to create genius moments on the spot, build your confidence muscles and create a seamless groove between the brain, the mouth and the other human, along with building authentic connection.  Some part of me believes if I experience enough jouska, I will be better at conversations in real life.  That is not how it works.

​The only way to get better at conversing is to - you guessed it - converse.  And the only way to have control over things is to -  you guessed it again - give up the idea you have any control in the first place.

Which leads to art, the creation of which is a conversation of sorts.  And no matter how I see and rehearse the conversation with the canvas in my head, what happens at the end of my fingertips is something else.  Often so so SO much better than anything I could have imagined.  Well. Who knew?

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About the art:  This piece began with a gesso murder of an old acrylic painting and a vague idea of what I wanted to create.  Something that hints at a dystopian setting, but could also be a landscape, or maybe a contraption or a view into another land.  How's that for wishy-washy?   But I knew the colors  I wanted, so I began with a loose sketch with a long brush laden with thinned oil paint.  From there, the piece developed solely with two sizes of rubber wedge and a chopstick.  Moving around the piece, sharpening lines here, softening and blurring there.  Adding paint with the wedge and then subtracting by dragging another wedge through the wet paint.  The ghosts of city buildings (or are those the masts of ships?) appeared on the "horizons" so I let them be.  In the end, it is nothing like I imagined, and yet it is something more than that.  It packs a lot of punch and drama in a relatively small painting.  Huzzah!