A Year of Soft Conversation 2016

Curator: What grabs me immediately is this feeling of melancholic surrealism. I see it in the light, almost cinematic, and the unexpected presence of those birds swirling around her. What do you make of it? Editor: There’s definitely a powerful narrative unfolding here. The artist, Joshua Flint, created this oil painting titled "A Year of Soft Conversation" in 2016, and you can feel that storytelling element strongly, even without knowing anything else about it. Curator: Yes, it's like stepping into a paused moment of someone else's life. It’s beautiful but unnerving, right? I keep returning to the shoes perched on the edge of that strangely lit table, almost like abandoned relics. Editor: The shoes function almost like symbols of potentiality, a promise that remains unfulfilled, or perhaps disrupted, by the unsettling presence of the birds. Flight, freedom, but also disquiet and disorientation, particularly because of their coloring, and that the eye keeps focusing on that group on the bottom left. In the language of symbols, shoes, in general, signify our path, life's journey, and its progression. And, of course, birds usually come as messengers between the real and surreal planes of existence, so here they might signify thoughts of moving, fleeing. Curator: So, escape versus stasis? That resonates. But tell me more about how that surrealist element plays into the narrative for you. Because while there's something deeply "real" about her expression, the whole scene feels dreamlike. Editor: The interplay of realism and surrealism, or expressionism, creates an unresolved tension which gives this image the capability to signify different themes for different observers, while always staying evocative. Think of Dalí placing melting clocks in a landscape—we accept the real with the impossible. And then the rest of it comes down to a matter of color and the narrative which unfolds. Also, those blank-ish areas or blurs do reinforce the dream-like impression. It feels unfinished, raw almost. It really gives a weight of authenticity to the subject matter. Curator: Exactly, unfinished in a way that makes it so real and poignant, as if remembering some suppressed or unacknowledged anxiety... What a wonderfully complex piece! Thank you. Editor: My pleasure. It's amazing how a single image, rendered with such deftness, can contain such a wealth of possibilities and potential reflections.