Displacement. Oil on canvas, 24×30″. 2021
The permanent status of coronavirus living for the last 18 months has me feeling discombobulated and unattached. My head and my heart are not in communication because if I think too much my heart breaks and if I feel too much my brain implodes from fires and floods and the playpen politics of the U.S. Congress.
I sketched my sensation of feeling dis-placed – a head framed and separated from a body reaching out to be re-attached.
I used the sketch as my inspiration for a painting, along with a mummy portrait of a young woman painted during the Roman reign of Egypt around 100 AD:
Portrait of a young woman Roman Egypt 100AD
The frame traveled from sketch to painting, but the stance between the women changed almost immediately. In addition a vine appeared separating her head and her body.
June 30, 2021
She continued to slightly morph, over the course of a week but for the most part I kept the composition wherein the woman gazes over at her disconnected, but dressed body, which is ready to venture forth in the world in her red high-heeled shoes.
July 2, 2021
July 6, 2021
In the final version all of her nails are painted and the vine is coiling around the frame–an escape route or something to get entangled in.
July 9, 2021.
The vine fulfills its purpose of keeping head apart from body because while talking heads were once predicting victory over Covid, my heart knew otherwise. We live in a state of perpetual disconnected suspension- waiting.
