Discontinuity at 3:00 a.m. — Covid Realizations Sink In

I woke in the middle of a late May night in 2020 with a profoundly foreboding sense of the discontinuity and deepening realization of the turbulence consuming — and about to further consume — our society and the world.

The pandemic; the economy; failing healthcare; racial and ethnic and religious strife; the political maelstrom; burgeoning violence; massive distortions in information; the contortions of Social Media raising the specter of an imminent communication failure; the unraveling of our reliance on science and empirical facts; a collapsing capacity to set priorities like putting empathic care for each other first; the impossibility of engaging in thoughtful, collaborative, informative dialogue — it all struck me as a tangle of intersecting, entagling paths and colliding agendas.

It seemed like our country was having a nervous breakdown.

The piece at the front of this section pretty well captured the image from the dream. It was jarring in form and color and deployment - rather like the state of our world … and my mind.

Since then, these pieces show up periodically. There’s a quality of Searching. I’m less certain there’s a quality of Finding beyond experiencing, recognizing, and acknowledging the situation.

The above statement above was written in the early portion of the Covid disaster. Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, it still continues, stealthy only in the minds of those who want everything ‘back to normal.’ It’s not.

In this section, I’m compiling some paintings from the consciousness-raising period earlier on that are less sweepingly chaotic – more reflective in intent. 

Some have been in exhibitions. That was rather a mixed achievement in that on-site exhibits continued so work was physically displayed but attendance was restricted.

So, some of these pieces represent a quality of mixed achievement: Recognition never seen by the public. You know – if a tree falls and there’s nobody around to hear it.... That kind of thing.

This section started out with that bolt-awake painting from early on and, revisiting it now 5 years later, I’m going to add pieces for different moments in that period.

Almost incomprehensibly, my reactions to those early pandemic moments seem kind of quaint in the context of the subsequent upheavals unfolding to this very day.

Maybe, in that sense, my back-then paints still express pertinent emotions relevant to right now.