Happiness and Guilt That's My Life in Isolation
My Studio Photo by Yianni Johns.
Covid 19 isolation is fantastic for me. No, I’m not happy people are dying in hospitals and in their loungerooms and the streets. In most cases they are alone, away from their families, that is sad. But for me as an Artist and Writer this virus induced isolation opens the door to great contemplative time and also leaves me with time to paint and write.
Usually I have to top up my creative life by working three to four days a week as an aerospace engineer out here in the Riverina. That money helps pay for the everyday stuff, food, utilities, petrol, art supplies and champagne. No Corona for me in this period. Although over summer I am sure I contributed to that beer manufacturers wealth pretty well. I lost my engineering gig over a month ago.
I am lucky I have a debt free mortgage free life. That is why I moved from the bustling city to the relative solitude of the Riverina district to a village called Ardlethan. Population of probably two to three hundred with the majority of them getting around on mobility scooters.
The town quickly got on board when my family and I moved here just over two years ago by declaring me their Artist in Residence. In the past two years I have assisted the town to have an annual art exhibition fund raiser to help fund their museum and gallery to be built next to the men’s shed in the village.
The second annual Ardlethan Art Prize had to be postponed a year because of this alienating virus until May 2021. It’s sad because last year we had 141 artist works in the exhibition, 33 included our theme Kelpie’s. Ardlethan is the home of the Kelpie. The works were judged in the Kelpie section by five farmers. All very quaint and poignant being we are surrounded by farms.
With the art prize postponed I have more free time for me to create. I feel weird and lucky at the same time. More time free to make art and finish a book that I have been working on for the best part of a year. I love the isolation from the world in my studio. Right now, I am working on a series of once important buildings in dying Australian towns. It’s my effort to save them, be it on canvas in oil paint.
Pardeys Flour Mill Temora oil on canvas, 60" x 15" 2020
I have time to luxuriate over problems of depicting these buildings as they are. Time to evoke feelings of importance. I love this virus induced time. One picture I painted recently has a kind of spooky presence in a once great but now dwindling town. It’s a metaphor for what happens out here in regional towns. I have time to give my art its feeling.
Saunderson's Building Ardlethan. Oil on canvas, 18"x 24" 2020
Economic centralisation, and globalism are undermining these beautiful towns, acting as a slow kind of corona virus on these places by slowly shutting down services, shops, pubs and clubs. Not to keep people apart one point five meters but to consolidate their cash somewhere else. This alienates the old. They have to do business on computer, not possible for a lot of them. They find themselves isolated by corporate decisions that don’t care. Something like this virus running riot through the planet it is indiscriminate, doesn’t care it just wants to kill its host. It reminds me of business and the regions.
Now I face a period of economic constriction as art is really a commodity that cashed up people buy. There are going to be according to recent articles I read on the ABC News website, 3.1 million people out of work. So, there goes a big percentage of my market. Again, should I feel bad because I feel good about this?
Blouza Crest, oil on canvas 2020.
No, because now in this environment of no deadlines, no sales, no commissions and no expectation, this is the time I paint for me, from my heart. Adoring every free moment to achieve this, suppressing my sadness for the people who are sick and passing. But it doesn’t stop my creative turnover. I roster my days. Rotating my routine one-day painting, one day writing. With a day off Sundays, but I never take that.
I’m not sure whether I will be able to get my paying gig back at the end of this era. I am sure though I will have plenty of stock and a book finished by the end of this thing. I placate my sadness by dedicating these creative achievements to all the poor people who have been beaten by the Covid 19.
Ardlethan Silo Half Full, Oil on board. 18"x24" 2020
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