Portrait of a Virus

 

Portrait of a Virus

8x10, oil on panel

coronavirus series

How often has everyone known what a specific virus looks like? 

Closed in our homes and staying abreast of the rapidly changing story of the pandemic, we became well acquainted with the model of the virus that was upending our lives. 

Playing to an Empty House

Playing to an Empty House
16x12 oil on panel

From road house to grand auditorium the sharing of music stopped. The uniquely human experience of coming together to enjoy live music was prohibited. Fleets of musicians have no income, musical institutions can’t sustain their losses and there is a creeping realization of how long this dark period may last. Originally thought of as a mere intermission in an ancient tradition it now appears that gathering for a musical experience may change forever.

Arias sung from balconies, orchestral pieces delivered by zoom and performances in darkened concert halls are sweetly tragic. Musicians need to play and people want the emotional experience that only music can deliver, but performance is interactive, among the artists and between musicians and their audience. The communion we feel when sharing

live music simply doesn’t survive social distancing.

Night Shift

Night Shift

coronavirus series

16x12 oil on panel

Public spaces, now empty, were disinfected at night with fogging machines. The other worldly scenes this gave rise to made me wonder how far into Dante's circles of hell we had ventured.

Sorry, We're Closed

Sorry, We're Closed

Coronavirus series

16x12 oil on panel

As the stay-at-home orders began to reshape our lives, our eyes moved from the large public spaces that were empty to the more intimate gathering places that had been ordered to close. Restaurants, where we go for conversation and community as much as for food were shuttered. First the idea that lunch with a friend or a casual cup of coffee was not possible was a shock, then the realization of the depth of our troubles crystallized seeing all the "Closed" signs. Dread of the economic fallout took hold. Not only were individual workers doing without needed income, but how many businesses could survive being shut down for a couple of weeks? As weeks turned into months we knew that a second disaster was taking place all around us. All those closed doors indicated another form of silent suffering that would take an enormous toll in a whole different way.

 

Helping From Home

Helping From Home

16x12 oil on panel

As the stay at home orders were issued across the country it was stated that our rare trips out would require a mask. The shortage of personal protective equipment immediately became so severe that those whose lives depended on it, health care workers and first responders, were going without. Workers in essential services from grocery store employees to postal workers also needed to wear masks every day and they were in scarce supply. 

Brigades of women pulled out their long forgotten sewing machines, dusted them off and got to work. Patterns were shared and how-to videos sprung to life. Heroines like Stephanie Oddo, who organized the Healthcare Mask Collaborative, delivered donated fabric and elastic to a wide circle of people who produced thousands of masks at home and delivered them to medical facilities and military groups. 

The juxtaposition of sitting at a sunny table in a quiet house and making masks in the hopes of saving the lives of people on the front lines of a pandemic was startling.  I thought of World War II volunteers who helped hospitals suffering from severe shortages, collected scrap metal for reuse and planted Victory Gardens to supplement food rationing. But the United States had built the most stunning consumer society the world had ever seen since that time. We now face overwhelming choices and companies promising to goods faster and cheaper. 

How could this have happened? 

Silent City

Silent City

Coronavirus series

20x16 oil on panel

The speed with which cities shut down in quarantine was shocking. It went from a novel event that a few countries were going through to a sight seen around the world, creating scenes that were utterly unique and haunting.

This enormous intersection, built to organize a huge volume of traffic sits empty. Numerous lanes for cars, trucks and bikes are still and the two lone pedestrians seem to emphasize how tiny each individual is in the complex systems we've built. Looking at the scenes of shuttered businesses and empty streets it sinks in that it's going to take a while to build back from the overall silence the pandemic imposed on the world. 

Coronavirus Series, Masked

Hello again!

I haven't shared any of my work for over a year. I've been painting a lot, but the series was about an emotional earthquake in my life, and I considered my paintings to be more therapy than anything else. I focused on recording my feelings in a visual way which took me in a different direction with my painting. The pieces were raw and so was I, so I kept them to myself sharing only with a handful of  brave friends.

Who knew that I was training for recording the images of a world wide pandemic? I have in the past month begun a series of the startling and quickly changing images that the coronavirus has brought.

Masked

16x20, oil on panel

This is the first in my Coronavirus series. I saw this man in a busy urban setting and was rocked that someone in a city in our county felt the need to wear a mask. By the time I was half way through the piece the person that stood out on a street was the one NOT wearing a mask. My head spun. 

The images have been coming so fast that I can't keep up. I planned to do an elbow bump painting, but within a week we weren't getting within six feet of one another and we were pulling on gloves to pick up things that others had possibly touched. 

My files are full of ideas and I'm painting virtually all the time. There are currently 3 finished pieces and 3 under way. I will share once a week or so. 

Thanks for checking back in with me. Let's all be helpful, kind and careful with one another. It's hard to understand what others are going through, now more than ever.