For the last few months I had been dealing with the health issues of an aging parent. All my art related activity had stopped, and I focused on family.
When I did return to painting, plans that were previously made were alien to me. Everything felt very distorted, not an artist’s block, but a disconnect as I was living with more tension than usual. Being a painter is the worst occupation to deal with these emotions. Men’s pride demanded me to work through it.
The Covid pandemic made this situation worse as the new variant Omicron had appeared just as we believed it was coming to an end.
Note: At the time of this writing, Ottawa is under a siege against the Covid Vaccine Mandate. A grassroots movement called The Freedom Convoy, Canadian truck drivers have set up a Occupation of protest outside of Parliament hill. This movement continues to grow throughout Canada into different provinces.Ontario is now under a State of Emergency.The downtown core of Ottawa is still under occupation and in its 17th day.
2021 had become a mirror image of 2020 except differently distorted and disturbing. Many people were frustrated as traveling had become limited. Vaccine passports have been forced alongside covid masks as a necessity to our daily lives. For the unvaccinated, this had become a barrier to employment, a divided argument among families, and a prison for passionate travelers. Homebound, I could relate to what they were feeling, and wanted to be somewhere else.
Whatever I was going to do next would be living with this tension. I started thinking of ESCAPE, how tight that window of opportunity was for most people, and knew I could not go anywhere. Winter was coming.
Originally, all I was thinking about was the weather, but then the animals started to come. The Tiger was not planned, and I would find out later that 2022 was the Chinese new year of the Tiger. Interesting synchronicity.
I continued with this idea and developed a painting with no certainty to what was coming next.
Friedrich Nietzsche is always quoted by others as saying “To live is to suffer..” but they often leave out the second line which is the most important part, “to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
I didn’t find any meaning in this suffering. However, if there is someone else going through a similar situation. My hope is, this article helps them feel a little less alone.
Victor
