Doug Anderson, Breaking Dawn, 16x20 watercolor
Art is essential at all times. The present moment emphasizes the point. I realize now how attached I am to the inspiration I take in from art that I see in museums and galleries here and abroad. Now, quarantined, I examine all my art books or sort through images on-line as I look forward to the day I can roam freely outside. The practice of art for me now is, as usual, as a solitary inward glance yet one cannot escape the feeling of confinement.
Theresa Bartol, Desert Greens,36x36",o/c
Like Agnes Martin, Georgia O'Keefe and others who chose New Mexico to remove themselves from the distractions of living within rural artist communities, I choose to paint locations where creative energy is not compromised and communication with natural sources is the subject of my paintings. I always trust my inner compass to guide me to landscapes of solitude and healing energy.
Nancy Beal, Delft and Lace 26x27 2018 oil on canvas
I have been bringing the outside inside for several years now. For 30 years I sat outside painting large landscapes. After two bouts with Lyme disease (plague 1), I retreated to the inside to the "landscape of the table". Right now (during plague 2, COVID) that decision feels reinforced-the safest place is alone in my studio.
Jane Beckwith, Farm Series: "Broken Willow" Acrylic on canvas 1996 48"x48"
I painted “The Broken Willow” the morning I left my farm for the last time, after being there 25 years. The night before, a storm sent the big limb to the ground. It seemed such a symbol at the time and in these times it stands in again for loss. My bedroom is my studio now. With my strict quarantine since February, I have actually found time to take some short workshop classes through Robert Blackburn. Usually in the summer I would be in Venice at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, and in Florence at the eponymous art school. I won't be going this year. It isn't Italy, but how fortunate I am to have a big deck outside my kitchen door for an outdoor studio.
Elizabeth Bisbing, Cherry Tomatoes 8.75x11” collage: gouache on paper
I have always been interested in the domestic. It has been an underlying motif for my work. During this time of self-isolation I’ve returned to “home” once again. (I have been looking at the same rooms for several weeks.) “Cherry Tomatoes” is a collage made with paper painted with gouache. These pieces of paper are then used to ‘build’ a painting. We have been eating cherry tomatoes like jellybeans – delicious! I loved piecing together the woven straw trivet.
Richard Castellana, Variation on a Theme by Matisse II 48x36 oil on canvas 2020
I did a smaller painting on this theme with an abstract of a bush (without the fire) in the foreground. I don't know exactly what inspired the addition of a fire, but it seemed appropriate to real life...it is basically a joyful painting of dancers under (really, over) threat of becoming consumed in flames. It only occurred to me afterwards that it was apropos to this time of pandemic.
Michael Chelminski, Rain at low tide, 20x21" oil on linen 2020
This painting, started in the fall, helped me through the beginning of Covid 19. When overtaken by fear and worry for ourselves and family it was very difficult to work, much less start, something new. I’m grateful for the continuity of work that “Rain at Low Tide” offered me.
Marcia Clark, Franklin Street, o/c on board, 27x160"
I've begun going through and identifying paintings stored in racks and nooks and crannies throughout the house. Yesterday I was sad to find an old favorite packed away in a suitcase. Some paintings still seem to retain a sense of the inspiration I felt when I first painted them, and some I look at with embarrassment as they are unresolved and bear flaws of weaker moments. This one is a miniature folding screen, only 27 inches high, that I painted while living in Tribeca. The intersection which is at Franklin Street has seen many changes, yet it seems as I imagine it today during the pandemic, with minimal outward signs of human activity.
Anne Diggory, In Suspension 36x48" acrylic on canvas
“In Suspension” began on March 16, when I set off for a day of painting in wilderness isolation. I had just made the stressful decision to cancel my upcoming show at Blue Mountain Gallery due to impending pandemic closures. That day I should have been packing up paintings for the show, but instead I headed for a waterfall within an easy drive, seeking distraction and solace. It wasn’t entirely an escape. Something about the stranded tree trunk resonated with my own sense of time suspended, with reverberations of both sudden catastrophe and the regular flow of natural forces.
Kim Do,View of San Mateo, 24x48" oil on linen
Although while isolated I have made other paintings (including over a dozen gouache portraits in Zoom grid meetings), this work from last summer better represents my ‘oeuvre’. With its portentous sky swirling above an equanimous earth, I feel a prescient sense of the coming calamity in which we now find ourselves. I believe all humans know things beyond our conscious understanding. Artists may be more sensitive, and like tuning forks, vibrate with energies that surround us. But these past months have exposed the fissures and faults of our society with a starkness all too painful.
Yet I rise, yet I remain hopeful. This plague will pass. My wish is that awareness of our connection to the planet, and our stewardship moving forward, preserves the world for our inheritors. And then, if good leaders arise, moves people to create the just, and sustainable, society we’ve always dreamt.
Ken Ecker 4-21-20 5/8. Md. 4”x3” Mixed media on paper
My work is about inherent energy in nature. Working representationally but not pictorially, and being part of the biosphere , my work is a non-judgmental meditation on this energy.
Owen Gray, “Mysterious Creatures” oil on paper 6.5 x 5”
The images in the painting are invented creatures moving in all directions, representing make believe organisms. The other shapes and symbols are inspired by the Italian Renaissance. I'm exploring both of these kinds of images and am combining them together to create a world of mystery.
Carol Heft, Fear and Separation 12 x 18 pencil and crayon on paper
This has been a time of reflection and self-assessment, as well as an opportunity to reach out to friends, students, teachers, colleagues and family. The other side of the physical isolation we are experiencing, is the strength and love we share with each other. I have found myself connecting with others in a deeper way than before the pandemic, a crisis which, unlike localized war, famine or political upheaval, directly impacts all of us. In my recent work I find myself focused on the power and pathos of the figure, in drawing, to convey both despair and hope.
Sam Jungkurth, Earthquake 56x72 acrylic on canvas
A figure, crippled and afraid, is surrounded by the world crumbling down upon her. The painting was originally created in response to the earthquake in Haiti. This pandemic feels like a disaster.
Charles Kaiman, Bread and Garlic 12x18 oil on wood
This still life was done directly from the motif. Focusing on precise color-value modulation helps with dealing with the present day.
Marjorie Kramer, Out kitchen window Early Spring, 10 1_2x12oil on panel
I am finding the Covid lockdown a very good time to paint!! I am Producing more work that I am pleased with than usual. Perhaps it is the somber quiet. I am not lonely thanks to my husband and connecting with others on the computer. I have been painting a series of trees out our kitchen window in which the trees seem lively, marching up the hill, each with their own gesture, poking their heads up. It all is life-affirming, perhaps especially at this time, so basic. I am thinking about other historic pandemics, quarantines, and hoping we will find medicine for Covid soon, and enjoying masks, gloves, social distancing, the statistics. It feels almost medieval, historic, that we really are all in this with that pesky virus ---and somehow that relates to what I am painting.
Margaret Leveson, Quarantine Views 24x18 oil on linen
The painting “QUARANTINE VIEWS” was the first of a series of paintings that I have executed since the start of the pandemic when I sequestered in my Brooklyn residence. The view in the painting is from my studio window, a window I share with my cat. She has been teaching me a new perspective on life. She waits patiently for a pigeon to land on the window sill. I too wait. I watch the budding tree, the neighbors appearing on the fire escapes opposite, any sign of the return of life.
Helene Manzo, River of life 40x40 oil on canvas 2020
Most of my work depicts WATER. Water is life. Rivers are a metaphor for life’s changes. Moving from calm to rough, always changing. Right now we are heading into turbulent times.
Richard Mills, Night_30x24_oilcanvas
My wife and I are so fortunate to be away in the country. Daily natural rhythms reassure us with a normalcy, even discounting for strange weather. We carry on, always aware of the crushing reality affecting everyone, everywhere. And the pain and sacrifice of so many souls. And the uncertain future.
I’m finding it very difficult to focus on painting. Gardening and spring are my immediate hope.
I had been indoors all winter painting. In “Night,” the studio lights - now flowing outward, my shadow cast on the meadow, lights of the village, Orion above with a half Moon, Venus in the west.
lakananda Mukerji ,Realizations 14x12" Lithograph
At this time during lockdown, several things came to my mind. I asked myself, why am I doing art? Why am I teaching? Since I have all the time in the world to think now, I think a lot about my past and my family. I talk more to my family and friends now since I am more at home. I started to understand my relationship with my 19 year old son more than ever before. I reconnected with the things I really enjoy doing, like listening to classical music, bird watching, walking by the lake, gardening, reading Philosophy and History. I became happier through these realizations about myself. I realized these are the things that influenced both my art and life.
Alexander Purves, Cedar 22x15” watercolor on paper
Especially at times like these it is the natural world that nourishes and provides a center. Trees have preoccupied me with their strength, resilience and the beauty of their forms. Each is unique. With the reduction of pollution, nature has begun to reclaim the Earth. I pray that we do not revert to our wasteful and destructive ways.
Time Ross, 73297 May 7 , 20x11" Digital image
And they rise.
Victoria Salzman, Sometimes I feel like I'm really going crazy7x19 etching
The title says it all!
Janet Sawyer, Night Traveller 36x48 acrylic on canvas
“Night Traveler “is the third in a trilogy. Black and white abstract shapes both curved and straight progress across the canvas. The Images might evoke portals, personages or elements of sea or sky. At the right of the canvas a moon-like quarter circle abuts a straight edged shape with undulating curves on its opposite side, bringing the trilogy to its conclusion.
The new paintings continue some earlier themes but are certainly affected by the current Pandemic as well as my closeness in Montauk to the sea, sky, land and my heightened awareness here of nature’s cycles and the passing of time.
Linda Smith, Nocturne oil on linen
The figure in the painting faces his death, naked, anxious and alone. The moonlight's path offers hope. Now is a time for all of us to mourn and to heal.
Clifford Thompson, Child and Toy 20x24 acrylic on canvas
My visual work during the pandemic, as in Child and Toy, seems to involve giving in to my feelings, at least some of the time. The painting represents an acknowledgment of what is happening, but is also a reflection of how I often feel generally: that we (we are the blue toy man) are running in place while at the mercy of forces that show no obvious signs of being a grand design, that may as well have come from, well, the mind of a child.
Sam Thurston, Still Life in Brown, 12x13, oil on board
The darkness in this still life and the intentional suppression of subject matter reflect our inability to identify things clearly, as is the case at all times but more obviously now.
Jim Weidle, My Kid could do That, 36x24" 5/2020
I've been asked "to include a short description of the artwork and how it fits this unusual time." What about the notion that if somebody looked at this painting for a while they would see the answer to the question in the painting?
