I have been recovering from Long Covid since July of last year when I got the Delta variant even though I had been twice vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine. Long COVID has upended my life in so many ways (to difficult to list here) but slowly but surely I have gotten back to art making.
( For those who also suffer from Long Covid I have been receiving treatment at Mt Sinai Hospital's Long Covid treatment center and I even started a blog for awhile on Resources for Long Covid but then I got too exhausted being on the screen to do that and stopped. Still, I feel it has a fair amount of material there: Coping with Long Covid )
Later in my recovery process I decided I wanted to use the limited energy I have to devote myself to painting and my creative process over and above everything else. Thus I have re-immersed myself in painting with a renewed zeal and commitment. At first, I switched to acrylic at first as it dries faster and has less fumes. I also began work on smaller canvases as I could begin them on a table and manage that painting that way.
Fighting brain fog, dizziness, fatigue, pain in my body, chemical sensitivities and a host of other symptoms has been a challenge to say the least. Yet I have progressed in my recovery as I have painted. I am not back to 100 per cent by any means. But I do see progress.
In my paintings I have continued using the human body as an agent for my work as well as a vehicle for my emotional/inner experience both lived and imagined. I have also immersed myself in the matter and creative process of using the paint to communicate my ideas to the viewer.
The result in my paintings is a blend of figuration and abstraction as main grounds for my work. But other art movements, especially expressionism, inform my art.
While my Long Covid experience is a front and center theme in these paintings, it is not alone. The Covid pandemic as a whole, the Ukraine war, the worldwide problem of misogyny/abuse toward women, the rise of dangerous fascist government and the brutal attack on our climate also inform my paintings. My lived experience in the greater culture where dystopia, dysfunction, disconnection and depersonalization is rampant, and where the on-going battle for peace, love and higher thinking is on-going informs my work too.
As I progress, both in painting and as a Long Covid survivor, I will be featuring some of recent works here with some of my personal comments here.
