Covid Diary: Nets and Other Devices, 2020

mixed media on paper

 

The first three images of this series are adapted from individual panels of Vinyl Euripides, the vinyl narrative designed for the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens. The rest of the paintings are also, though more indirectly, under the spell of that project.  The colors evoke the terra cotta of the ancient vases I was studying and reflect the naked strata of enduring earth visible in the mesas, canyons, and arroyos beyond my windows in Taos. They are the colors of blood and rust, the alchemy of water, minerals and fire.  The funeral pyre of hands from Vinyl Euripides became even more starkly relevant during the pandemic lockdown and civil unrest of 2020, as did the grief of Hecuba at the destruction of her city, the murder and enslavement of her children. In another image an invasion force leaps joyfully forward on its mission of plunder, released to its grim destiny by the public murder of a young woman, abetted by her father’s greed, deceit, and fumbling.

 

Although painted in spectacular isolation while sequestered in the mountains of northern New Mexico, news of our struggling world was never far off. The hands, nets, monuments, seas, and Delphic devices of indeterminate purpose found in these paintings each bear their own histories and associations. My painted conversation with Michael Cacoyannis and Euripides continues, and one day Vinyl Euripides will find its home in Athens. I have been spending a lot of time with Euripides.

 

May through July 2020, Taos