The bed seems like a place of total honesty to me. You have the opportunity to see the other person up close, and because you are very close to their body and face, your voice may change its tone, its volume, and things become automatically more intimate, like telling a secret. Words have weight here. Do you talk about everything and anything in bed? Do you feel more intimacy here? Do you feel more honest here? Does the bed feel like a place where you can be yourself in conversation? How does talking in bed change dynamics of a relationship for you, if you are in a relationship?
I took my inspiration for this painting from a drawing on a friend’s Facebook page* of a word cloud above two people’s heads as they met over lunch, and I remembered how much I liked a Thanksgiving cover of the New Yorker where all the words that everyone was saying at Thanksgiving dinner were written out above their heads. I’d been admiring artist Dina Brodsky’s sketchbook techniques with ink washes. So I took my first jump into acrylic inks and a new gouache set and this was scary and fun. I like having words on the page… I have to go lighter with the wash. The words were in pencil and you couldn’t see them after the wash! So I had to redo in pen and then wash over them again. I am satisfied with the outcome of even my mistakes. This gouache felt like acrylic–and it just didn’t do what I thought it would do when I was thinking it was like watercolor. When I switched my brain over to “acrylic” mode–it got easier. Hope you enjoy!
* Delia Sherman
Bear Witness 