Generally Specific
On grandpa’s boat in 1992, which ties in to this note at the very end.
I love to connect with other people (a mundane sentiment, I know, but hear me out). I also love to learn about new things (again, mundane…let’s hope this note improves quickly). It’s probably why I’m all-in on those Netflix documentaries about F1 and golf. Before watching them, I neither cared about nor understood either sport. But after binging multiple seasons, if someone brings up the topic of racing or Augusta National, I light up at our shared interest and am ready to discuss both passionately.
Social connection thrives on shared interests, experiences, struggles. There’s nothing like feeling seen by someone who “gets it,” who makes you feel a little less alone in the word. And I see this play out so clearly in my art as well.
Just this week someone shared that their family member who struggles with anxiety uses my paintings to focus on and calm their heart. I’ve had many psychologists and therapists tell me they decorated their practices with my work because of the joyful yet serene atmosphere they create. This connection point is particularly special to me, as someone who navigates anxiety and paints these scenes to help manage it. That thing I’m planting in my soul when I wave my brushes is what viewers are planting in their souls when they look at the finished painting. This is objectively awesome.
I was recently reading “Joke Farming” by Elliott Kalan. (Side note: his 13-episode breakdown of “The Power Broker” with Roman Mars on the 99% Invisible podcast was my favorite listen of 2024. Never knew you could LOL so much about city planning.) His book breaks down the process of comedy writing—another fine art, IMO—and as an art it holds a lot of parallels to painting.
My favorite principle from the book: Connection thrives in specificity. He writes: “Details make things funnier. This concept is called specificity, and it hangs over all good joke writing like your late uncle’s vengeful ghost demanding you catch his murderers before you can inherit his fortune. See how specific that analogy was? So much easier to understand than if I’d said something like “specificity suffuses comedy as a general principle.” Fellow comic Cristela Alonzo put it this way: “The more specific you are, the more universal it can be.”
Reality is deeply specific, and when we hear a particular detail, we connect it more easily to our own shared reality. I walk this out every day in painting. My best pieces come from a specific reference photo taken at a specific time in a specific place while I was feeling something very specific. I may add imagined details and colors to communicate the essence of that feeling, but at its core is that one particular memory, that moment in time.
When a painting is complete, and I list if for sale, I always have the same internal discussion: “Should I list the location so it connects to someone who knows that location? Or will listing it alienate a viewer who connects to the painting but has never been to that spot? But if I leave off the location, will someone who’s been there know that’s where it is?”
Clearly I need that T-shirt that says, “Hold on, let me overthink this.”
So I’ve decided the answer is BOTH: Listings can name a location if I think it’s important to convey, and the painting can still feel like a place you love that’s entirely elsewhere. The setting might vary, but the specific experience can resonate across time and space and geotag. Reason one million and one that I heart art.
—Jess
My summer series will be exploring the very specifically wonderful experience of watercraft, both views of and views from. Most of us don’t get out on the water every day, but can conjure up the memory of doing so with one whiff of salt air or squawk of a duck. I can’t wait to paint these moments from photos I’ve snapped over the years. Enjoy some of them below!
