This is a palette cleanser, brushes at the ready. My arm swings wide over the canvas spilling torrents of technicolour paint, freeing my inner most inclinations. In my mind’s eye, I’m conjuring Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler. Building layers of tacky sgraffito skin. But I let them go—and it’s just me, whirling through the inner reaches of outer space; excavating undertones of tourmaline-blue, celadon-green, lead-tin-yellow, in a pink coital blush. The maestro watches from behind… a critical eye at my wild abandon. He thinks me rebellious, oppositional, deranged. I think, damn right – my brilliant portfolio emergent.

Karen Schauber, Not the Matterhorn, 2023, acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas, 36 x 48”.

Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in over 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf Top 50. She is Editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings (Heritage House, 2019). She curates Vancouver Flash Fiction – an online resource hub, and in her spare time is a seasoned family therapist. Read her at: https://KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com