Quarantine Figures

I don’t have any right to scientifically analyze what has happened to us this past year and a half. I have had a ground level reaction to it as a painter and a poet that may be of some interest because the best thinking I do comes from my hands.

Like most artists I have an introverted side that needs feeding with three course meals of isolated time. Like Most artists, I got enough of that during the quarantine. The figures that resulted from this are Half length portraits of the intimate innards of people I talked to, Observed and thought about. The figures I painted didn’t just have one reaction to the isolation. Some went outward, others inward. I used Haloes to explore the kinesthetic auras that people emitted. There are some things that fans of haloes will recognize such as crown motifs, vines and plants, some may even look like electric wires. We gardened, we anointed ourselves kings and queens of our tiny domains, we wondered if we could go back out into the world and would the world in its altered state be there in some way for us.

I hope that the colorful poetic reactions I have had will find an audience and maybe even give some comfort with their humor or unblinkered honesty.

Joshua Kight