Ambiguous Feelings
Acrylic and oil on canvas. Pine frame. 24 x 30”.
This is an interesting tableau of characters. A fresh and virginal young woman in the drivers seat with a dubious expression, a ruddy faced man who has his interested eye on her. In the back, the man’s original companion, hiding her face behind her hat in chagrin? Disappointment? Embarrassment? Jealousy? Relief?
This is part of a series of works where I used predictive text to determine the captions or the words in the speech bubble. Predictive text is that feature on your messaging app where it tries to guess the next word. I would input a starting word or phrase and use predictive text until I thought the sentence vibed with the work.
In this case, I can no longer remember the original word I started with. I do remember being surprised when my phone offered an emoji as the “next word”. When I hit the emoji, the rest of the phrase disappeared, like the emoji had summed it up and was all that was needed to communicate.
As for who is feeling the emoji in this work, I think both women are sharing the thought bubble and the emoji, but they may be experiencing different meanings for it. Meanings as ambiguous as the emoji itself, which once upon a time symbolized sad tears, but with time have taken on new meanings including laughing, frustration, or even just emotional overload.