April is the cruellest month

In a recent UC Berkeley Arts & Ideas panel discussion called Literature and Art in Times of Crisis, the brilliant art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby discussed how the great paintings establish a connection when “dissonance, discrepancy and distance separate us” by bridging “isolation, economic inequalities, and racial hierarchies.” Grigsby opened my mind by describing how the act of painting – optical rendering – evokes our empathies by creating intimacy and a sense of touch, when facing the abyss of space and time.

For the last several weeks, I have been sketching (and painting) my life during the Coronavirus. Sheltering in place since March 17^th, I have sketched my interior and exterior life… my home and garden, my housebound companions, and socially distanced street life, captured when walking my neighborhood and waiting in-line at the grocery store. Sketching keeps me grounded in the here and now and keeps the deathly shadows at bay. It prevents my mind from wandering and mourning the past, an act that quickly becomes fear of a lost future. By sketching I remain connected to the present world, building intimacy when masks all but cloak our humanity. In this momentary limbo, we all grieve for our time we have lost, but must never give up hope of finding our time again.

Thank you T. S. Elliot for the loan of your first line from The Waste Land.