An unfolding Covid Narrative

‘Through self-portraiture, I am currently exploring the differences between the ‘face’ or ‘mask’ that I have habitually presented to the world, and the reality and complexities of my interior world. 

Using mainly charcoal and print, I am delving beneath the skin, endeavouring to express the essence of this interior world that has always been my escape and my sanctuary; a place where I have always been able to be ‘myself’.

It is a world that I rely on less as I grow older, but it is an integral part of who I have become. It remains heavily influenced by a challenging childhood alongside my experiences as a young woman trying to find my way (and find myself) in the confusingly hedonistic and misogynistic world of the 60s, 70s and 80s’

We have all felt constrained and ‘boxed in’ over the last two years. Those people having to shield because of health vulnerabilities have hardly left their ‘boxes’, but all of us have felt confined and restricted.
From time to time, people have rebelled and broken out of their isolation….and now we are all beginning to emerge and start to socialise a little, albeit still occasionally masked and all bearing the unmistakable marks of strain and stress.

After producing a range of sketches and many exploratory prints (linocuts, wood cuts, collagraphs and dry points) my final piece is a ‘Wall of Masked Emotions’ This is an entire wall (in a friend’s studio) covered with a series of 48 lino cut masked portraits that have been printed on flimsy, fragile, sometimes torn, often messy, crumpled up (and opened out) tissue paper. They are each attached to the wall by one small piece of masking tape. They move and flutter in the ‘breeze’ as you walk past them. There are eight basic images displayed in mirror image pairs, some are primary prints, some are layered, secondary or off-set prints. Most of the images have suffered varying amounts of fracturing and distortion through the unpredictable crumpling and opening out process. In some images (or parts of images) the colour is bold and strong, in others the colour (and the image) is fragile, almost fading into the background) Many bare the imprints of masks, and at least one of each of the eight images is overlaid by a printed mask (the two red ones are obvious, but the black ones are not). The use of black and white is deliberately bleak and monochrome, making the two red masks stand out in a stark and striking way, representing some of the shock, devastation and tragedy that has been an inevitable by-product of this pandemic. The fragility, fracturing, distortion, messiness, crumpling and fading are a reflection of how so many of us are feeling as we desperately try to hang on to some sense of normality and routine while the impact and consequences of Covid ebb and flow around us, wafting us into unfamiliar and unsettling scenarios.