“The Heart of the Conversation” series

I have heard that a great movie, an important book, a political strategy can come from notes jotted down on a napkin at lunch. Since strokes of ideas can come at unexpected moments, if not captured, the idea might disappear into the already flooded corridors of the brain, perhaps, to be lost. A popular place for me to have a “stroke of an idea” has been at church, sitting in the relative quiet and contemplating the cosmos. Being an artist those ideas have become scattered sketches, doodles, and drawings in my journals and engagement calendars. For years I have entertained turning those ideas into colorful visuals or stories. Last year I marked, copied, and gathered all those scattered visuals into a central binder. Then in July of 2013 I began to paint them. Because they are from my imagination the style approach is much more stylized than my regular approach to painting which is more to the impressionistic/realism side. As I painted I had such feelings of joy and peace that I knew I had stepped over the threshold of a door into full self-expression. The first one was “Holy Cow!”. The sketch was made in my journal on the day that I sold four paintings and found out I didn’t have cancer anymore. That became my annual “Yee-Haa!” Day, November 15. As others followed I needed a name for the series. “The Heart of the Conversation” was born from a conversation with my daughter, Katie, who gave me the name suggestion: “Missing The Heart of the Conversation” for the second one. How appropriate to these images which are a visual “play” on words. Visit my website http://dilleenmarsh.com/to see more of this series. Enjoy…as I am.

I jotted this sketch in my journal as I recorded the day I sold four paintings and found out I didn’t have cancer anymore.

The finished product is a 9 x 12 inch oil on board.