Even though my website-room is a place to escape, I haven’t visited during these lockdown days of Covid19. When gathering artwork to upload, I realized I had 23 images dating back to last summer. The phrase can’t see the forest for the trees came into my head. I lament my slow working style and indecision – but after the drop, drop there is surprisingly a pool.

Many people anticipated a creative flourishing during lockdown, but instead have experienced preoccupation and low productivity. No wonder.

The art I’ve been working on is mostly in my sketchbook, my favourite place to be. Messy doesn’t matter on those pages. I have a small chaotic work table that feels claustrophobic and irritating, but that also describes the inside of my head. The art that exits out of this mess, though, keeps its history fairly private.

In mid February I painted a selfie called Coffee Monster. Although I love coffee, it was the word Monster that rang true. The blonde hair bob was a “change your hair, change your life” moment, and the phrase, “store in a cool place” was a reaction to my relentless eczema flare and claustrophobic panic. Please let everything stop for a while. And then it did…for all of us.

Everywhere stopped and the days have gone by. And the monster is a virus. And the human response has been a mix of good and bad. 

My first art response was Coco-loco on March 20th: being idle and wanting to produce, not wanting fear to crack open, baking cookies, and hoping love would prevail. I recently wrote a new bio line for my work: The imperfect psychology of where collects materials from before and from now, creating portraits that have an archived presence holding steady in the spin of current experience.

It’s certainly the place I want to create from this next year.