The Pandemic Portraits
Created In and From the Void … in 3 Acts
These portraits will be company for you.
But ... they Needed to be made. For me.
A need I didn’t understand at first - because I don’t make people.
And these people came pouring out.
This collection stems from the TWO ENTIRE MONTHS during which I LITERALLY didn’t TOUCH another human being in 2020.
It's about recreating connection.
About recreating the way we know how to live together.
About filling the void of physical humanity.
In all forms: Handshakes & Hugs & Close Couch Sitting,
High fives & Yelling on strangers’ necks at baseball games &
Whispering in your lover’s ear ...
THE SOLUTION?
Create Your Own Companions.
imaginary faces
I traditionally create landscapes and expressionistic abstracts, but in the Fall of 2020 … in the void of real live people, I started creating people.
People. Blind Contour. Acrylics and House Paint on Canvas. Big Canvas. Faces. Eyes. Lips. Noses. It only took 7 long months of living in isolation for them to materialize.
blind contour - via Zoom
A subconscious grasping at straws to feel connected without being allowed to connect. A heightening of secondary senses. Like a blind person feeling someone’s face with their hands… because that is the only way.
blind contour - in person
Some are people I imagined. Some are real pictures of real people created via Zoom. BUT my favorite subjects were my elementary art students. Once back in person at school, we spent a whole day drawing blind contour pictures of each other. I asked their parents for permission to turn some of those drawings into paintings. And it feels like the BEST celebration of people being people in real life together in the same place to be able to draw them. (Even if you did imagine what their mouth looked like under their mask.)
