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In the fall of 2020,  I embarked on a series of daily paintings on found materials from my apartment: cardboard packaging, food wrappers, plastic waste, and especially junk mail, which had been accumulating excessively given the fall 2020 elections. In normal times, I’d have displayed these paintings in a gallery space. Instead, I created an installation in my bedroom, transforming the space into a visual sense of the chaos felt when spending the days in one space for so long. I covered the walls and ceiling in found materials like those I had been painting on, then hung the daily paintings on top. Since I cannot have people coming into the space in Covid times, I documented the installation through photography, and compiled the installation shots as well as images of the individual paintings into a book that exists both in both digital and print forms.

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The paintings are a diary, documenting the people I interact with, the relationships of lockdown, the words and phrases on my mind, and the things I think about while trapped in this space. The subjects are the few loved ones I can see at this time: my roommates, my partner, and those on my screens. The paintings are done in acrylic paint, which allows not only for immediacy, but also a toxicity. These paintings, especially when in conversation with found materials, signal the moment in time at which the work was created. 

 

The use of purple in these works is to signal feeling:​ purple is comfort, self expression, and a tool for world building. By imbuing the images and materials in this otherworldly hue, I have created my own universe with the ephemeral. This is perhaps best captured with the objects in the series, like the ghostly jars of peanut butter and hand sanitizer bathed in purple and blue, which have completed their original purpose and are transformed into members of my collective universe.

 

Though this project is intensely personal, the materials of the paintings and chaos of the installation speak to an unconventional time that many people might be able to relate to. This piece should prompt contemplation of the experience of a certain place, of materiality and consumption and waste, and of the complex relationships formed in a time of such uncertainty.