My family and I went into quarantine last Spring. We stayed home, didn’t see anyone and focused on staying healthy physically, emotionally and spiritually. For the first few weeks I didn’t have any time to create. Time passed and we had no sense of it. Is today Tuesday or Thursday? What’s a Saturday?I was overwhelmed with fear and feeling panicked and didn’t have the space mentally to be creative or make art. The focus of my days were about my family, homeschooling my children, and navigating our new normal. Already sleep-deprived I was up at all hours going over scary scenarios in my head and desperate to get my feelings out. There were/are so many unknowns.
During one of those late, sleepless nights, an idea for a new collection of work was born. Sometime after 3am I heard birds chirping and I felt seen. Even the wildlife was confused and they were up with me wondering what time was. I started to think of my place in all of this and what it means. How do I fit in and how will I most remember this time. I think a lot of people assume that the world works in a predictable, logical, and linear way but if 2020 has taught me anything it’s that this isn’t the case. Expecting that things will actually go on as planned just perpetuates this fantasy. The world is not operating the way it usually does. At first it was just Covid-19 but now, in addition to the pandemic, social justice protests for the Black Lives Matter movement have been happening all over the world and demands for change are rightfully erupting everywhere from Instagram to the streets of cities around the world. Things aren’t working the way that they usually do and this is the perfect moment for change - both global and personal. This shift in energy has affected me tremendously and I felt almost no control so I had to convince myself to embrace that lack of control and just go with it rather than be paralyzed by my anxiety and insomnia.
I started to draw mini-portraits that became small illustrations and almost like a diary of this time. I turned inward. I realized I was focusing on the thing that really mattered - our well-being. I started to experiment with oil pastel - a medium I hadn’t used for over 20 years - and I remembered how much I loved the texture they create and the ease with which they glide across the paper and canvas. My home studio can’t be used for creating large scale oil paintings because of the fumes and lack of ventilation but I didn’t have to worry about that with oil pastels. I began making these mixed media (pencil, acrylic and oil pastel) drawings that became like self-portraits of all the ups and downs.
This has been a period of self-reflection to push myself and try to understand this world and where I fit. When I’m creating I’m always thinking about the concept of excavation and discovery and how we can grow when we dig at the layers of ourselves — with all this time to think I got closer to the root of it and saw myself in a new way, trying new things, knowing what’s truly important, being ok with having no clue what’s next, and accepting that some things are out of our control.
See more of this collection here.
A selection available for sale on my Singulart page here. Please contact me at hello@monicashulman.com for more information.
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