Painting & Living During a Pandemic: Part 2
Some of the work I have been doing during quarantine.
Living during a quarantine
Last week we explored the lives of several artists who were impacted by the Spanish Influenza. This week we are exploring living under our current Covid-19 quarantine. There is an interesting connection between 1918 and 2020 epidemics. Despite its name—scientists believe that the Spanish Influenza also originated in China.
So here we are. Like many of you, I have been self quarantining in my home with my family since early March with no real end in sight. As dismal as that may sound, I have found many silver linings along the way. The first for sure is the extra time we are spending together as a family. We enjoy taking long daily walks and cooking and eating almost all of our meals together, And the meals are often prepared with produce grown from our own garden including tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers and now apples- very much “farm to fork”. I have even jumped on the sourdough bandwagon with apparently everyone else in America, making my own weekly “boules” of bread and pizza from starter. For those of you who are into baking sourdough I highly recommend these recipes: for bread Elaine Foodbod Boddy and for pizza, this recipe makes a great fast dough that you can bake within hours of mixing which is an important criteria for families with kids.
Online Classes
One of the most unexpected benefits of the quarantine has been the ability to both take and give online classes. I have had the good fortune to study with many artists that I greatly admire during this time including Zoey Frank and Alex Ramon Hurtado. Soon I will be participating in a record breaking online class taught by my former teacher Rob Liberace. The Portrait Society of America is hosting this class as part of their first ever online Art of the Portrait Conference. They hope to set a new Guinness World Record for participants in an online class. There is still time to join this exciting event happening this coming Thursday, on August 27th.
And I will be offering a couple of new online classes myself! A rotating 4 week Adult Beginner - Intermediate Oil Class, a Teen Drawing and Painting Class on Wednesday nights, and a Pumpkins and Sunflowers Oil Painting Workshop the weekend of Sept 19 & 20th 2020. There are still slots available. For me the most favorite part of my online classes has been that anyone around the world can participate. My students have even been inviting their friends to join them, making for a fun and creative way to connect with each other. Interested in a class? Please click on the links above and tell your friends!
Painting
A quarantine it turns out, is a wonderful opportunity to get work done in the studio. I have fallen into a productive schedule of painting, teaching and family life. And I have even found the time to regularly escape with friends to paint the landscape in “plein air”. I shared some of the work that I have produced during quarantine at the beginning of this post, but there are also many things that are currently works in progress and are not quite ready for “prime time” (which I will be sharing later ;). In addition I am finding it easier to secure time to ruminate over the next body of work, something that in the past I sometimes neglected. My new schedule allows for daily journaling and exercise in the morning before I even get into the studio. I find it makes me both clear headed and feel like I have already accomplished something in the morning - in other words, I am a new convert!
What have you been up to? Any new hobbies? Please share and leave me a comment. I would really like to know! #betterthanbefore
