COVID 19 quarantine 2020 is over forty days old for most Americans and as an artist I’ve tried working harder and using the time to hone my skills. Interestingly I see where many artists find that with all that time on their hands they feel less like painting.
We began our COVID 19 quarantine back in March when our Archbishop directed that we limit services to no more than 10 people in the church at one time. It came at about the same time as President Trump and the US Centers for Disease Control recommended gatherings be kept to less than 10 people.
This has been especially challenging for us as quarantine took place during the 40 days of Lent and 7 days of Holy Week before Pascha (Orthodox Easter). During this time under normal conditions we have church services several times a week during Lent and sometimes up to three times a day during Holy Week. Traditionally and practically, this is a time where we spend a lot of time with our church family and this year’s quarantine has been tough.
I tell you this, dear reader, so that you understand that although this quarantine has been hard on me personally I have still managed to make the best of it very much due to my faith AND my art. Because although we couldn’t attend services in our church, we did have the blessing of live streaming services from our small but humble parish.
Before Governor Greg Abbott of the Great State of Texas called for a “remain in place” directive I had signed up at Studio Comfort Texas for two four-week in-house classes; drawing and watercolor. Jeanette MacDougall offered the courses on Zoom once we were locked in, but I opted to have her hold the money I’d paid until the next in-house classes. I have done plenty of YouTube and other Internet-based courses…I wanted LIVE classes.
That being said, I have kept painting and did manage to take a couple of on-line courses.
The first class I took was by Michael Solovyev, a Russian-Canadian painter who I recently discovered and was trying to figure out a way to get to one of his live classes. The quarantine squashed that plan for me and him so he began classes online which I signed up for and have been working through over the past couple weeks.
I also managed to stumble, thanks to Facebook, on a class by a storyboard artist on a site called Domestika. Alex Hillkurtz offered a course on architectural sketching and I really learned a bunch from this $19.99 course.
Taking these courses has helped me improve my skills and at the same time helped me to overcome what I’ve seen many artists talking about during the quarantine…a funk or malaise that’s preventing them from producing art.
Hopefully this will be the last quarantine I see in my lifetime. As I’m a bit of a history nut and I couldn’t imagine letting this historic time go without somehow journaling about the experience. So I’ve added a few things to my sketchbooks in the hope that someday someone can look back and see, from my viewpoint, what Quarantine 2020 was like.