Quarantine Portrait
| This painting was made while I was sick with COVID-19, in December of 2020, before vaccines were widely available. In this portrait, the subject is laying among moss and white thistles (which can represent either pain or resilience), while white moths land on her face and shoulder, symbolizing death or transformation. Her glazed over eyes, greenish skintone and floating hair are meant to indicate a fever, and she is clawing at her mouth as a reference to being bothered by the loss of her senses (taste and smell). This piece evokes the fear and anxiety that comes from reckoning with the loss of control one has over nature running its course. Depending on your reading, she is either looking forwards and eventually re-emerging from a solitary and terrifying quarantine back into the life she’s been forced to step away from, or emerging from death into the other world beyond. |