Looking back on my work over the past couple of months, I can see my state of mind changing and evolving during the pandemic. Last fall and early in the year, in the ‘before-time’, my work was cool and meditative.
And then in mid-March, the lock-down began. Kids stayed home from school, businesses shut down, and we became obsessed with the news: infection curves, the ‘r’ value, and terrible stories from Italy and elsewhere. I had strange, vivid nightmares which inspired new and darker work:
After a while the dreams and nightmares subsided, but life was different. I had the strange sensation that the world was on the verge of dissolving. That things were not really solid; that at any moment my surrounds might melt away into smoke:
The stress of the pandemic has exposed deep fault-lines in our society; brought our problems to the surface. We have a chance to re-imagine and re-build a better society: kinder and less materialistic. There’s optimism in the crisis; light gets in through the cracks! My latest work reflects this sentiment: seeing through older systems to new possibilities. The good side of impermanence:
