An interesting conversation and a shout-out.

First and foremost, a huge shoutout to @thegregperkins for this amazing photo of me working. Thank you for taking it, and thank you for sending it to me and letting me use it. You are incredibly talented.

Me, working on a commission in my window, blissfully unaware.

This morning, I was scrolling as one does when drinking coffee in bed with one's husband of 32 year as of 2 days ago, and I saw an amazing portraitist in reels. Unfortunately, I can't find him now, but if I run across him again, I'll post. His brush strokes were smooth as butter, his edges were flat, his paint was exactly the right consistency, and I said, "Man, I wish I could paint like that."

My husband asked me, "What's the difference in the way you paint and the way he paints?"

I replied, "I tend to be a lot more careless and impatient when I paint. If I'm angry, or irritated, the paint looks angry and irritated. I have more edges that I have to scrape down later, and I don't have the precision I want."

He said, "That's interesting. Your paintings are emotional, though. That's one of the cool things about your paintings."

"The problem is that..." and I had to pause for a second, to let my thoughts catch up to my mouth. "The problem is that I want the painting, the art, to be a precise evocation of it's meaning, separate from my feelings at the moment. It's kind of like how when you speak when you're angry, or when you haven't thought it through, you don't always speak clearly and accurately."

He accepted that answer. But it got me thinking. What would happen if I just opened up a channel between my heart, my hand and the canvas, and paid less attention to a specific meaning or message I was trying to put across? What if I were less intellectual about it? I think part of my worry is that my technical skills would severely suffer, and nobody would relate to it, or think I knew how to make "good art." But I think a more hidden part of my worry is that I would be a little too vulnerable, both in the process of painting and showing the work to others.

There are many times in my life when I haven't really been relatable. I know that because bullying has been a recurrent theme in my life. In my 50's, I've finally gotten to the point where other people's responses to who I am are their problem. For the most part, my presence in other people's lives is benign, so if their problem with me is so egregious that they need to bully, then they need therapy, not my attention. On the other hand, I'm very judicious about who I let into any of my circles, because my nervous system is pretty sensitive to negative drama. Drama and trauma rhyme for a reason. I hate gossip, cruelty, and I'm not fond of demanding behavior. Life is already too hard on most of us. Generating unnecessary conflict and emotion doesn't help anyone. If feels good in the moment, but I have always ended up regretting it. Karma really is a bitch, and she's only friends with the friendly.

It's not like I haven't ever opened up that channel - in fact, the painting on my homepage is an example of a very rare time when I did, and I'm really proud of it. But to live in that place? There's a reason therapy sessions are only an hour long. And I do feel like I have a specific thing I want to get across when I paint, and it isn't my irritation in the moment with my developing skillset, or my dirty brushes. While you could argue that those things are actually relatable to some extent, and that they reflect a state of humanity, my goal isn't that. My goal is to look at humanity through a more focused lens, like how we create power and wield it, and for what reason. Or how memory shapes us in the present, even though it isn't any more real than the future. Those are the things I want to talk about right now, and it requires precision of language, and my language is paint on a canvas.