This collection of paintings is based on an ongoing series of mine: “Emotional State of Minds”; color pencil drawings, depicting specific moments in my life, freeze-framed and visually translated as I felt it in real time.
During most of 2020, (forever now known as the “Year of COVID”) we lived a year of circumstances that became the “New Normal.” Being forced to reevaluate, rethink, and reimagine all aspects of our lives, I expanded on the image of the virus most often used by the news media as inspiration for a new body of work. Triggered by the repetitive use of that COVID 19 virus image, the unprecedented and visual impact it had on each of us individually and collectively as a whole, I created 19 paintings, blowing up the circular virus-like shape and visually documented not just mine but other’s stories of particular experiences during this pandemic.
These paintings take inventory of our vacillating emotional state of minds, and the personal struggle during all this uncertainty. It gave direction to my attempt to remain centered and focused and to be able to emerge out of it changed, morphed, yet still full of hope and positive vision. The close-up views of imagined virus-like amorphic organisms serve as a tool to look at things through a much different lens than what we are used to. Each sphere is like a complete universe, magnifying our everyday rollercoaster, compartmentalized in “frozen” images hiding our fears, building upon our imagination, with a bit of wishful thinking mixed-in with a yearning for peace and balance.
A time of great upheaval always reveals the strength and resilience in people, humanity and an incredible dose of inspiration to create and empower those who feel lost, alone, left behind, and fearful, to inspire others to spark actions that help, heal, and support each other. In solidarity we will create a new future for us all. The lockdown and restrictions on our mobility, and the disruption to our social life and daily activities amplified our personal emotional responses. “Change your perspective and discover new angles and point of views in visual metaphors, and you change the outcome.” I hope this body of symbolic work transcends not just in this time of crisis but in any other difficult situations we find ourselves in during our lifetime.
After all, we are all in this together! WE ARE HUMANITY!
