“Qualis artifex pereo…” If ever there is a germane moment in an artist’s life to take Nero, the fifth Emperor of Rome, seriously, and, consequently, to try to correctly translate his words, it is precisely during a pandemic! (December 2019 – August 2021) "These are works created between December 2019 and August 2021. They are the offspring of a “cordon sanitaire” that challenged my cloistered creative impulses to the brink of burnout. On the sunny side of the process, my decade-long interest in a multifaceted abstract expressionism was nurtured by the “cordon solitaire” that the COVID-19 “Q”uarantine imposed upon me..." (read more on project page: https://alexandru-crisan.com/projects/q/)