"Kitchen Table" (2024) - Acrylic Painting on Wood (Patreon)

Before you have thoughts, please let me explain:

Let me tell you about this canvas. As in, the canvas that this painting is on.

This canvas is from an estate sale that I went to in Overland Park, Kansas, in the home of Jean Singer. She was a prolific local community painter, who passionately devoted her life to her art and her loved ones for decades. She was specifically known for her love of painting pets, children, and sharing her love with those around her. Her estate sale, days after her passing, was the most moving, unintentional art exhibit I have ever been to. It was the most beautiful and memorable existential crisis I’ve ever had, as I navigated this woman’s home while thinking “What remains of an artist when we die?”

The answer is in the art we make, the supplies we had, and the things we loved.

From the estate sale, I bought only a few things. A photo album of her pet portraits, a fresh pad of tracing paper, a slightly damaged original painting tucked away in a back corner, and a prepped wooden canvas.

When I bought the canvas, I knew I wanted it for something special. Something significant, something of emotional importance. That felt like a good way to honor a woman I’d never met, but felt I had reached through time to understand her after she’d departed.

This is that canvas.

Let me tell you about this painting.

I have synesthesia. It doesn’t come up in conversation, so I don’t talk about it much. If you don’t know what this means, synesthesia essentially is a condition where receiving a type of stimulus, creates an involuntary response in another form of your senses, other than the one its engaging. The most common example is people who see color when they hear sounds. I have Auditory-tactile synesthesia. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been aware that every sound I hear has a size, shape, and texture. Invisible shapes in my brain and my eardrums that I can feel like physical items. Every sound, every day.

For the past month, I have paid special attention to the sounds of my partners and my metamour. How do they talk? How do they sound when they're excited? Upset? Happy? Frustrated?

And then, I knew what I wanted to capture. So this is a visual representation of the shapes I feel when they laugh.

The pink is Freya. When something’s really amusing to her, she has a dry cackle. Sometimes a very distinct shriek when something is REALLY funny. It’s something we all love to hear. It’s big, it’s recognizable, and is characterized by these sharp points that intersect. It’s something we all STRIVE to get out of her, because making Freya smile is truly a highlight of one’s day.

The green is Jazz. usually, her laugh starts as a chuckle, but then it grows from her chest. It’s soft, round, it reverberates. It’s genuine. I usually hear it in the next room over when she’s committing atrocities in a video game, and I find comfort in hearing her.

The blue is Lo. It’s loud, higher-pitched sometimes. It’s an exclamation, it’s a punctuation. I LOVE to hear it in a dark movie theater when something funny happens. It’s bubbly, smooth, and rises into the air like carbonation.

The yellow is Hopey. They throw their head back and laughs with an open mouth, it feels like pebbles worn down by the water. Supple, angular shapes. It’s the kind of laugh that makes you feel like the world is okay for a moment.

This painting is for all of them, from me. It’s called “kitchen table”. I love all of them so much, and I’m so glad that they are in my life. Thank you for loving me, and I hope that I will get to feel your laughter in the back of my head for many more Christmases spent together.