The Isolation Paintings – Color, composition and the sense of light are my usual obsessions. When I began painting for this show, the shelter in place order had just been handed down. What an opportunity to paint! But I avoided my easel for weeks. Instead of painting, I baked and knit and de-cluttered my bedroom and worked in my neglected garden. When I was ready to paint again, I understood what I wanted in this series. A sense of space. A sense of solitude. A sense of relationship between one and another, between one and many.
The blue cobalt jar – the tangerine – the red apples – and the spaces they inhabit became an alternative reality that expressed through visual metaphor the daily shift in my own perspective.
Sometimes the painting is more space than anything else.
Sometimes the objects seem to distance themselves from one another. Other times, the gathering feels more like huddling.
Apart, together. Together, apart.
I love these paintings and the new place they are exploring.
I love the spacious grays that support the vibrant chroma.
I love the movement of light across the spaces.
In these quiet paintings, I can feel the quietness. I can hear the birds outside the window, hear the waves softly crashing 800 feet below, hear the occasional car driving down the road.
Isolation – solitude – quietness.
Peace.