I started Side-Ways at the beginning of 2020, when I felt like everything was, well, going sideways. To say it’s been a very strange year would be an understatement! In February 2020 I was able to visit my sister, who lives just outside of Washington DC and we just happened onto an exhibit at The Smithsonian called, Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World—needless to say I was both horrified and in awe at what nature might be sending our way. The exhibit had been up for a couple of years and the fact that an exhibit about pandemics was closed by a pandemic was in itself sad and comical.

When we returned home and went into Shelter in Place I started this piece. At first it was a landscape format with the different groups of animal families standing on a golden ground. As I felt the ground figuratively shift under us I turned the piece sideways. And then, I felt the walls close in because of staying home all the time. The gold band on the left represents that wall which is at the same time both safety and anxiety.

The middle of Side-Ways felt empty of imagery yet filled with anxiety and fear, so I chose water spikes to represent our fluid situation. Water has such a cleansing power yet also represents the looming threat of climate change. I want to wash away this year. But, only in my painting can I do that.

The monster like creature represents the fear that exists in the world and the dove represents the hope we all have that we will be able right ourselves and return our world to a horizontal format rather than being “sideways.”

There are other things I was thinking about in this piece but I will leave some work for your own imagination so that you can create your own story. Because in the end we do all have the ability to create our own story, sometimes it means letting go of that old story we tell ourselves—so we can let the new story in.