Interfaces, Blue Distances (Lockdown Summer 2020) Painting

The painting was created for a group exhibition at Orleans House in Twickenham on the theme of Covid-19. This picture came out of my experience of the lockdown on hot days and nights indoors, during the summer of 2020. There was no clear boundary between day and night, especially as during the day I had to block out the sunlight to keep the rooms cool. Like many, I was regularly in communication with friends and communities abroad, in different time zones, mainly via Zoom, adding to the disorientation from local norms of time and space. The main light source, day and night, was the electrical blue glare of the screen or smartphone. As human beings retreated into private spaces, behind walls, and as public spaces closed down, many people the presence of animals, including their pets, more strongly. In this painting, the cat is the representation of these animals which took on a new significance. It is perhaps the "eyes of nature" looking back at people. The cat is unaffected by the media that so absorb the attention of people and it seems ever alert to realities that human beings are distracted from. I painted over a former landscape painting to create this picture, because former reality was being "blotted out". One result was to thicken and coarsen the surface of the painting and I augmented this, using mixed media. The paint surface itself is fully discernable only if you see the painting in person, not via the Internet. It is full of knots and textural elements that make it like a cave wall. I wanted to have this primitive primeval cave wall quality alongside the so-called hi-tech magic of the Internet in dimensions replicating the dimensions of a laptop. I also wanted to reference the often laughed-at superstitions associated with black cats, as well as the preoccupation of people with their pets, sometimes seen as sentimental, clichéd or even banal.

Painting:Acrylic on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:16 W x 12 H x 0.8 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.